Nature & Wildlife
Some tiny birds on remote Scottish islands are undergoing a dramatic evolutionary transformation. Four isolated populations of British wrens have grown astonishingly large. At the other end of the scale, however, leopards in South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region have become much smaller than most African leopards.
Nature & Wildlife
This year, International Haiku Poetry Day is on April 17. Traditionally, haiku is a Japanese poetic form that takes the natural world and the seasons as its primary subject matter. It acts as a concise form of environmental literature, emphasizing direct observation, sensory details and an appreciation for the transient beauty of the natural world.
Nature & Wildlife
The predator/prey relationship is an age-old association. Despite that longevity, it can still mystify us. For example, on a remote Alaskan island, gray wolves are rewriting the rule book by hunting sea otters—a behavior few scientists ever expected to see.
Nature & Wildlife
Small plants like mosses rarely draw our attention. Many moss species grow close to the ground in damp, shaded environments and are no wider than an eyelash. Despite their modest appearance, however, these plants have some formidable capabilities.
Conservation
While wildfires and controlled burns (also known as prescribed burns) are both fires, they differ significantly in their impacts, management and origins. Wildfires are unplanned and unrestrained, often caused by natural events like lightning or human error—such as unattended campfires or discarded cigarettes—and they can cause extensive damage.
Nature & Wildlife
Wild animals are not just the inhabitants of the natural world—they are its architects. That’s the exciting finding from a new study that reveals how hundreds of species have shaped the landscapes we depend on, from beavers creating entire wetlands to hippos carving drainage systems.
Nature & Wildlife
We know that spending time in nature is good for us, proven by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of scientific studies. But most of what we know about nature and its benefits have come from research focused on how seeing nature affects us.
Nature & Wildlife
We human beings have certain basic needs. We must have air, food, water and shelter to survive, according to NASA. If any one of these basic needs is not met, then humans cannot persist. I think the same applies to more-than-human animals, as well.
Nature & Wildlife
Sometimes, the divide between us and wildlife seems wide and deep. Animals live far “out there,” we typically think, while we reside in cities, suburbs, towns and semirural areas. But more and more, we find ourselves in the lands and vicinities of wild animals.
Nature & Wildlife
“This is the most magnificent mammal on our continent. Its story is so complicated and so interesting and moves into every aspect of almost every era of our lives and touches on so many subjects you wouldn’t think it would necessarily touch on,” says filmmaker Ken Burns of our national mammal, Bison bison.
Conservation
Today, across the planet, hundreds of millions of acres of land are being abandoned due to what’s known as rural outmigration, or people leaving for urban centers. Some people leave their rural lives behind to seek economic prosperity in cities when agriculture is no longer profitable.
Canada & the North
Rising temperatures are causing Earth’s coldest forests to shift northward, raising our concerns about biodiversity loss, an increased risk of wildfires and the mounting impacts of climate change on the people who live in the region. But it’s not only the planet’s forests that are marching northward.
