Environment
ArchiveRafting Uganda's White Nile. Courtesy of Flickr Kayakers, paddlers, and boaters are mourning the loss of some of their African habitat. As of February 27, a section of the White Nile River in Uganda is closed to river traffic to make way…
Back in December 2008, before President Obama took over, Tim DeChristopher was attending the University of Utah and spending his free time at a Bureau of Land Management auction for oil and gas lease sales. To say…
Yogi bear was born in 1950 and weighs 490 pounds, at least, those are his vitals according to the Provo, Utah police records. The Utah County Sheriff's department apparently uses the name to show rookies how to book in their computer system. What they didn't account for was the record…
Courtesy of IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group A new study from the Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group of the IUCN reports that…
Courtesy of Flickr A Florida resident captured the death of a manatee on video, which can be viewed online at WSVN News. Lance Irvine, the owner of…
Courtesy of Flickr The 6.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand Tuesday morning has caused extensive damage to the country's longest glacier. The quake shook nearly 30 million tons of ice from the…
Yesterday, President Obama unveiled the America's Great Outdoors: A Promise to Future Generations report, according to the Outdoor Industry Association.The AGO report focuses on connecting Americans with the outdoors and encourages active, outdoor lifestyles. Sally Jewell, president and…
Five to seven months without eating, drinking, urinating or defecating. It's not a punishment, it's hibernation, and bears do it every winter. Until now, however, little was known about the physiological changes that allow a bear to survive hibernation. A study released today by researchers at the University…
The Japanese whaling vessel Kyo Maru No. 1 on a whale hunt in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Courtesy of IFAW The Japanese whaling fleet is leaving the internationally recognized Southern Ocean Sanctuary around…
ExxonMobil hopes to drive huge trucks full of equipment for the Alberta Tar Sands through the twisty mountain roads of Montana and Idaho—and the plan has two literary heavyweights, David James Duncan and Rick Bass, steaming mad.
Yellowstone bison. Courtesy of Flickr Wildlife officials in Montana shot and killed an uncooperative female bison on Monday in the Gallatin Valley north of Yellowstone National Park, according to Reuters. The bison was one…
Photo courtesy of Flickr. The nonprofit ARC announced a winner yesterday for it's competition to design a wildlife crossing over I-70, near Vail and Breckenridge ski resorts, The New York Times reports. The area marks…
Courtesy of Orin Zebest on Flickr. As the national interest in hunting has waned and game habitat has become suburban development, government conservation efforts face budget crises, the New York Times reports. Hunting license sales and…
Now more than ever, the world could use some bright ideas. Like these.
Little Nemo is looking at you. (Photo courtesy of Shek Graham on Flickr.) The next time you go fishing, you might want to take a moment to consider how the fish feels before you bop one on the head or hook it through its gills,…
Courtesy of dobak on Flickr. Wolves in the Rockies will remain on the Endangered Species List despite growing controversy over their protection, the Associated Press reports. Negotiations between the Obama administration and lawmakers in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming…
Photo courtesy of Flickr. Tigers living in the wild could go extinct in 12 years if countries where they live neglect to take action to protect their habitats and fight poachers, The Huffington Post reports. A…
Photo Courtesy of Flickr Professional football has long been known as excessive: monstrous salaries, massive stadiums, and huge players. The Eagles took a step back today though, planning to offset their power consumption by installing 80 sprial wind turbines and some 2,500 solar…
Obsessive biologist Rick McIntyre has some peculiar ideas about America's most controversial predator.
Photo courtesy of [.ReStart.] on Flickr. A Minnesota family was driving to get pizza on Saturday when a deer came flying through the front window of their car, whacked family members in the face, then continued on through the back window,…
The climate cycle known as La Niña has remained steady through October, Surfersvillage Global Surf News is reporting. Characterized by below average surface water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, La Niña typically affects the western United States…
American Bison: A bovine mammal (Bison bison) of western North America, having large forequarters, a shaggy mane, and a massive head with short curved horns; a buffalo. If you were on the internet this week you probably saw the picture of the torn-up…
A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization casts a foreboding future for California’s National Parks, which could become poster children for the likely detrimental impacts of climate change. The study found that 10 parks in the state, including Yosemite, Death Valley, Redwood, Joshua…
Photo courtesy of Flickr A new species of monkey found in Mayanmar has an upturned nose that fills with water when it rains, causing it to sneeze, Science Daily reports. The new species, named Rhinopithecus strykeri, is better known…
Ever wondered what it takes to snap award-winning wildlife photography? So did the folks at New Scientist. They interviewed five photographers from this year's…
GardenFork's Eric Rochow shows you how to build your own bat house in a new video tutorial, posted at Wired Science. Yes, the end of October is rapidly approaching. And, let's be honest, if you…
Master all things meteorological with our expert primer on sun, wind, snow, and rain
Why are leading green groups like Patagonia offshoot Freedom to Roam still in bed with BP?
When minister and aid specialist James Gulley came home alive from the Haitian earthquake—barely, after an incredible survival ordeal in Port-au-Prince—he turned right around and went back. His son went, too, discovering the true power of a faith he'd never shared.
Running a DIY dog-rescue operation is never easy, but when you've got two dozen misfit animals under your care, you need a way to let off steam.
Photo courtesy of Flickr. Last night, divers from the European conservation organization The Black Fish cut the nets of six holding pens in Taiji, Japan, their Web site reports. The freed dolphins had recently been…
Courtesy of Edward Vielmetti on Flickr. Despite surpluses of dry grass across the West, the 2010 fire season so far has represented about a 20-percent decrease in the number of recorded fires and a 50-percent decrease in total acreage burned…
Courtesy of See-ming Lee on Flickr. A woman living near Frenchtown, Montana drove a bear from her threshold by hurling a 14-inch zucchini at its head, Fox News reports. The approximately 200-pound bruin was…
September 17 marks the sixth annual PARK(ing) Day, when people around the globe reclaim metered parking spaces as public spaces. According to Parkingday.org, the “project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted…
On Monday, the director of Utah's Division of Oil, Gas & Mining approved plans for the first commercial U.S. oil sands project, the AP reports. Director John Baza gave Canadian company…
Photo of the Exumas courtesy of baxterclaus on Flickr. Two legs, two arms, and a torso were found in the stomach of a 12-foot tiger shark caught off the coast of the Exuma islands, the United Kingdom's…
A team of Swedish scientists found a way to produce solar power using jellyfish goo, New Scientist reports. Green fluorescent protein produced by the jellyfish Aequorea victoria (pictured above)…
Copper Canyon Fire 2008 Photo courtesy of Flickr And we thought golf was safe. A golfer in Irvine, California recently set a 25-acre fire when taking a swing in the rough, Yahoo News reports. His club struck a rock during the…
Police shot and killed a mountain lion that was roaming the streets of Berkeley, Calif. early Tuesday morning, the New York Times reports. People spotted the 100 pound female around 2 a.m. on Walnut St. near…
Courtesy of NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr. The Associated Press reports that a Mariner Energy oil platform exploded earlier today off the coast of Louisiana, about 200 miles west of the epicenter of…
The first dolphins caught in Japan this season were herded into the notorious Cove at Taiji today, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society reports. The Society, an International non-profit conservation organization whose mission is to end the slaughter of…
The new patriarch of the first family of the sea, Jean-Michel, 68-year-old son of the legendary Jacques Cousteau, is founder and president of the Ocean Futures Society, a nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation and education. Son of the legendary Jaques Cousteau, Jean-Michel, talks to Anthony Cerretani about his latest…
Guess who's hot in Hollywood? Will Steger. With producers suddenly primed to make environmental films, the legendary polar explorer hit L.A. with a scary pitch about global warming—and he was a smash. In this podcast, Senior Editor, Stephanie Pearson, reads her profile of Minnesota's Will…
Sylvia Earle on stage during Session 1 on the Mission Blue Voyage in the Galapagos. Credit: TED/James Duncan Davidson Sylvia Earle dives into all things blue. She moves equally well through conversations on ocean technology, ocean politics, ocean lifestyle, ocean science, and ocean exploration. In 1966,…
Patagonia has released its Environmental Initiatives 2010 E-book, and you should check it out. It's not just a place for the company to geek out about how many tons of clothing it has recycled since the start of its Common Threads program…
Sometimes, when there's a big environmental problem that defies immediate understanding, it helps to resort to fourth grade science experiments. In June, Carl Safina pointed out during a TED talk that he believed bombarding oil with dispersants near the spill likely helped…
An Australian company has developed a new, Earth-friendly way to dispose of human corpses, New Scientist reports. Aquamation, a process where the body is placed in a steel container with potassium and water heated to about 200-degrees Fahrenheit, decomposes the body…
The Peruvian health ministry sent emergency teams to a remote region of the Amazon last week after vampire bats bit 500 people and started a rabies outbreak, the BBC reports. The community of Urakusa in the north-eastern Peruvian…
Photo Courtesy of Flickr Worldwide CO2 emissions dropped by 1.3 percent in 2009, German-based renewable energy institute IWR told Reuters last week. The institute cited two reasons for the drop in emissions from 2008: the weak status of…
A piece of ice roughly four times the size of Manhattan island broke free of the Petermann Glacier in Greenland yesterday, according to the University of Delaware. The last time the Arctic lost a…
Hatching now in a national forest near you: Dendroctonus ponderosae, the ravenous insect destroying every tree in its path.
Volunteers and Nature Conservancy staffers counted bighorn sheep this July to see if efforts to conserve the endangered species' population are working. The 40th annual bighorn sheep census took place in triple-digit heat at California's Anza-Borrego…
He glanced through the glass and saw Tilikum staring back, with what appeared to be two human feet hanging down his side. There was a nude body draped across Tilikum’s back.
Navigating the politics of river conservation can be tricky. Here's what's going on now.
The fabled giant catfish of the Mekong River will soon be driven to extinction if hydropower dams planned for the Mekong River go ahead, ENN reports. The giant catfish is one of the largest freshwater fish…
A donkey-zebra hybrid was born at a Georgia wildlife preserve about a week ago, the Gainesville Times reports. The Chestatee Wildlife Preserve usually attracts visitors with its white tigers, but the zedonk is the new sensation. Only…
Courtesy of shaferiens on Flickr. Commercial and academic laboratories across the country are making significant investments in engineering algae to produce fuel, the New York Times reports. The goal is to develop a variety of…
Reports from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection released on Monday show that almost 25 percent of China's surface water is unfit for even industrial use, according to Reuters. Inspectors took samples taken from major…
Global warming gets a lot of bad press, but the news isn't all bad for yellow-bellied marmots in the Colorado Rockies, according to the New York Times. Scientists there observed that with warmer temperatures,…
Brazilian native Indians took 100 workers hostage on Sunday at a construction site for a hydroelectric plant in the southern Amazon region, Reuters reports. The Indians–as many…
The Plastiki, a catamaran built out of 12,500 plastic bottles, ended its voyage from San Francisco to Sydney on Monday, the New York Times reports. The boat was the brainchild of European banking heir, David de Rothschild. He's on…
A unmanned solar drone, the Zephyr, stands to set records in a test flight over Arizona's Yuma Proving Ground, the New York Times reports. A representative from QinetiQ, the British company that developed the drone, says that the plan is to land the aircraft…
A Citybank in Hong Kong got a quick lesson in environmental issues when it ran an add offering credit cardholders 15 percent off a “shark's fin and garoupa dinner,” the New York Times reports. Citybank Hong Kong withdrew the promotion last week…
Arizona's Tempe Town Lake, home to several multisport events including November's Ironman Arizona, drained almost entirely last night after the lake's inflatable dam burst, the Arizona Republic reports. An estimated one billion gallons of water poured into the Salt River bed overnight,…
Google Energy, a subsidiary of Google, signed a deal on Tuesday to purchase 114 megawatts of energy from a wind farm in Iowa, CNET News reports. The deal is the first for Google Energy, which was created last December. The…
What does a double rainbow mean? Watch this nature video, and you won't find out. You'll just hear the question asked with a sense of awe—accompanied by healthy scoops of exclamation and crying. It's worth watching anyway. Special thanks to The…
In an 88-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler banned personal watercraft (i.e. Jet Skis) from Gulf Islands National Seashore and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, according to NationalParksTraveler.com. Motorized recreation…
Today, BP began testing another cap designed to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the New York Times. Once the new cap is in place, BP officials will conduct a 48-hour test to see if the…
In our June issue, senior editor Grayson Schaffer profiled Summit Series, a group of young CEOs looking to build community through adventure outings. Recently, the group traveled to Haiti to deliver aid to the…
Courtesy of NOAA. Two new species of pancake batfishes have been discovered by researchers in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Reuters. The population of one of…
tedxoilspill on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free TEDx dedicated a special conference to the oil spill. They sent videographers, photographers, and specialists to the Gulf of Mexico for a week to document the disaster, so they…
Courtesy of NOAA. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the collection of 70,000 turtle eggs from 800 nests on Alabama and Florida beaches within the next two weeks, according to the Associated Press. If left in place, hatchlings from the eggs…
NRDC put out this video on the spill featuring surfer Laird Hamilton and volleyball star Gabrielle Reece. The two recently visited the Gulf of Mexico and spoke about how they reacted to the…
The New York Power Authority announced Wednesday that it will be applying for a lease from federal regulators to build one of the nation's first offshore wind farms, according to…
For the local surf community in Louisiana, conditions are grim, reports Surfer Magazine. At nearly three hundred miles wide and two hundred miles long, the BP oil spill that first began to escape from the pipes of the Deep…
In an attempt to reduce backcountry bear/human encounters, the U.S. Forest Service is renting bear canisters to campers for $2.50 a day, according to backcountry.com. The Carson RangerDistrict of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest has…
The Federal Trade Commission announced last Friday that lightbulb packaging will have to include a new label – though in a format familiar to anyone who's been to a grocery store – by the middle of next year. The “Lighting Facts”…
New research suggests that the flight pattern of a starling flock reaches beyond the usual rules of biology, Wired News reports. Mathematical analysis of starling flocks show that it does not matter how far away one…