Biodiversity
A grassroots push to save vanishing birds and bees forces change on Germany’s farms
When Norbert Schäffer was a child growing up in Bavaria, gray partridges picked through his parents’ garden, wetlands teemed with newts and toads, and birds like skylarks and lapwings were common over the fields. But when Schäffer moved back to the area in 2014 after nearly two decades of conservation work in Britain, those touchstones… » Read More
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In the jungles of Borneo a novel approach to end deforestation — and the spread of disease
In the early 1990s, Kinari Webb took a year off college to join a Harvard researcher studying orangutans in Indonesia’s rainforested Gunung Palung National Park. As the aspiring primatologist dissected dung samples to determine the animals’ feeding habits, the buzz of chainsaws and the thwuuuump of falling dipterocarp trees—some of the tallest species in the… » Read More
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Popular ScienceAudience 5.5 million
From the sea floor to the courtroom, the fight to save right whales grows urgent
Artie Raslich has been volunteering for seven years with the conservation group Gotham Whale, working on the American Princess, a whale-watching boat based in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. In that time Raslich, a professional photographer, has glimpsed a North Atlantic right whale, the world’s rarest cetacean, only twice. The first time was an unseasonably warm December… » Read More
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4 million online readers per yearYale Environment 360
How do climate change, migration and a deadly sheep disease alter our understanding of pandemics?
For thousands of years, an unknown virus lingered quietly among the wild ruminants of South Africa. The kudu. The giraffes. The Cape buffalo. Spread by a genus of biting midges called Culicoides, the virus lived in harmony with its hosts, rarely causing disease, until the late 18th century, when farmers began importing purebred merino sheep… » Read More
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Ensia3 million monthly reach
Can grazing save endangered grasslands?
On the last weekend in May, in the northeast corner of Oregon, there is a traffic jam of weathered pickups and horse trailers on the Zumwalt Road. Redwing blackbirds trill over the bellowing of hundreds of Angus-cross cattle clustered by corrals, the sign of a spring branding in progress. Half a dozen cowgirls and cowboys… » Read More
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152 million unique browsers worldwideThe Guardian
Is carbon farming a climate boon, or boondoggle?
Trey Hill led a small group of fellow farmers to a field outside his office in Rock Hall on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a cloudy February day, but the ground was alive with color — purple and red turnip tops mixing exuberantly with green rye, vetch and clover, and beneath it all, rich brown… » Read More
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4 million online readers per yearYale Environment 360
Can Asia’s infectious disease-producing wildlife trade be stopped?
For the past 40 years, the Chinese government has promoted the wild animal trade as a form of rural economic development. But the industry ground to a halt this winter when it became clear that the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan originated in a “wet market”—where throngs of customers shop for live animals held in cramped… » Read More
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Are we handling the bee crisis all wrong?
On a crisp June morning at Knoll Farm, high above Vermont’s Mad River Valley, Charlie Nicholson stalked a bumblebee. He tiptoed behind the bee as it buzzed along a row of blueberry bushes, carrying a net that resembled a lacrosse stick. “The trick is to catch the bee without smashing the bush,” he said. “When… » Read More
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170 million unique visitors a monthHuffPost
An unhealthy alliance between almonds and honeybees
In January, with the almond bloom in California’s orchards a month away, beekeepers across the country were fretting over their hives. A lot of their bees were dead, or sick. Beekeepers reported losing as much as half their hives over the winter. Jack Brumley, a California beekeeper, said he’d heard of people losing 80 percent… » Read More
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170 million monthly unique viewers globallyHuffPost