Conservation
Spreading around the world at the speed of light, COVID-19 has now infected more than 2.5 million people and killed almost 177,000. Although the virus’s origins are still a little murky, it’s highly likely that it jumped from species to species, until it hit ours. Trading diseases with wildlife isn’t new.
Nature & Wildlife
When you weigh anywhere from 1,000 to 14,000 pounds, you tend to leave huge, deep footprints wherever you walk. But more than just evidence of your passing through, those footprints, it turns out, can be habitats for dozens of other beings. Much like beavers, elephants have widely been recognized as “ecosystem engineers.”
Antarctica & Arctic
Deepwater, mythic and prehistoric creatures, Greenland sharks inhabit the Atlantic Ocean, from Canada to Norway and off the coast of Scotland. When it comes to legends, some have suggested a Greenland shark may actually be the Loch Ness Monster. As for its prehistoric characterization, this fish can live up to 500 years or more.
Nature & Wildlife
The largest wild cat in North America, the mountain lion—also known as a catamount, cougar, panther and puma—has powerful limbs and can leap as high as 15 feet and as far as 40 feet. That makes it an expert at attacking prey from behind. It also tends to make hikers in mountain lion territory wary.
News & More
With our warming climate, some plants are managing to hitch a ride to Antarctica. Will they colonize and thereby change the continent?
Videos
How many trees are there in the world? That’s a question you—or a child in your life—has probably asked many times. Until now, however, there hasn’t been a very precise answer. But according to a new video produced by Nature, there are 3.04 trillion trees in the world; a number that’s hard to mentally grasp.
Alaska
Alaska is on fire. Even where I live in Wisconsin, I can feel it. A NASA photo shows that a plume of smoke from those northern blazes extends all the way down through the Midwest. But that’s not the only reason why I should care about Alaska’s fires.
News & More
For decades now, climate change has been altering habitats and causing a major shift of ecosystems northward. Unable to adjust quickly enough, some cold-adapted species are being forced to relocate to higher latitudes as warmer temperatures push them out of their traditional environs. For some warm-weather species, habitats are expanding.
Videos
We Earthlings are lucky. While other planets in our solar system are either blistering hot or bitterly cold, the surface of Earth has relatively mild and stable temperatures. We get to enjoy these conditions because of the Earth’s atmosphere, the thin layer of gases that envelop and protect our planet.
Conservation
With our Yellowstone wolf tours kicking off next week, we wanted to share George Monbiot’s TED Talk about the concept of “rewilding,” or what he calls a “mass restoration of ecosystems.”
