Non-native mountain goats in Washington state’s Olympic National Park may soon get one-way tickets across Puget Sound to the Cascade Mountains. The National Park Service, in coordination with the Forest Service and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, released a final environmental impact statement that calls for eliminating mountain goats from the Olympic Peninsula. Wildlife biologists believe as many as 725 goats live […]
Trump Administration Launches Endangered Species Act Rollback
On 29. July, the Trump Administration proposed a significant overhaul of the Law on Endangered Species, which describes regulatory audits that could purify the path for drilling, cutting and other industrial activities in areas that provide a key place for rare plants and animals. A trio of rule changes proposed by the Department of Interior would place tight limits on actions the federal government can […]
9 facts you need to know about forests and trees
Trees are incredible. They can live for thousands of years and grow hundreds of metres tall. There is not a species on the planet that doesn’t owe its existence to them. So here are some amazing facts about trees and forests for International Day of Forest. 1. The Boreal forest (aka Taiga) is the largest land habitat on the planet It runs across northern […]
How much of Earth’s biomass is affected by humans?
We know, even by casual observation, that humanity has disrupted the balance of life on Earth, eradicated habitats, reduced biodiversity, and driven some species to extinction. Now, an updated Census of Earth’s Biomass reveals some details of this transformation of the species diversity on Earth. The study – by Yinon M. Bar-On and Ron Milo from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Rob Phillips […]
A Revolutionary Paleoindicator: Lepidoptera Scales
Moth scales, preserved in the mud of a coniferous forest lake, have been used to identify outbreaks of these insects over the past 10,000 years. This groundbreaking new technique, reported in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, can tell us more about the frequency and intensity of past and future insect epidemics, their impact on the forest environment and how they are linked to climate change. […]