One of the unwritten rules of the industrialized age is that the more humans get to move around, the less animals do. Humanity’s unprecedented migrations – to look for jobs, escape from wars, mine for natural resources and visit new places – are, in fact, creating more and more roadblocks for the animals with which we share …
Conservation
Oil Spill: Aboard the Arctic Sunrise
There seem to be two rules to being a passenger on a Greenpeace ship. One: if you take a beer from the refrigerator, always remember to log it on the drinks sheet. (And pay your bar bill before you leave the boat—otherwise, I believe they make you walk the plank.) Two: there is no such thing as a passenger on a Greenpeace ship. …
Don’t Print This Blog Post!—the losing fight for paper conservation.
Please don’t print this blog post! Ach, who am I kidding, paper conservation is a losing battle. Don’t believe me? Check out this survey of 1000 employees in the UK conducted by consultancy firm Loudhouse on behalf of Japenese manufacturing giant Kyocera.
Invasive Species: Catchin’ Some Asian Carp
As fish go, silver carp—one of several species that fall under the general term Asian carp—have a lot going for them. They are voracious feeders, they can grow to more than 40 lbs. and their bony bodies mean few Americans want to eat them, so they can escape the overfished fate of their more filletable cousins. But they do have …
Conservation: A Disease Could Wipe Out Bats
Scientists have been puzzled about a strange disease that began attacking bats in New York state in 2006. The bats would suddenly awaken from hibernation in midwinter, their faces covered in a white fungus. Already weakened, they struggle to find food and die in large numbers. Called white-nose syndrome (WNS), the disease has spread …
Climate Change: How Adapting to Warming Could Make It Worse
Positive feedback cycles—they’re what keeps climatologists up at night. The term describes the way that certain ecological responses to a warming climate can further accelerate warming, creating a feedback cycle that can spiral out of control. Take the billions and billions of tons of methane buried beneath the Arctic permafrost. …
Protecting Tigers in a Troubled Land
Burma is best known to the West as the home of one of the most repressive military regimes in the world, a country where more than 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars. The U.S. has strict economic sanctions against Burma—a policy President Obama just renewed last week—and the country’s most famous citizen, democratic icon …
Getting to Know What’s in Your Ocean
Every so often we get a glimpse — a transluscent body with a glowing orb hanging off its forehead, or this dragonfish, with teeth on its tongue and jaws that look like they could take your arm off. These missives from our oceans’ depths are as captivating as they are few and far between – the fruit of long, expensive forays to
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Will Southeast Asia’s Hydro Rush Drown the Giant Catfish?
It’s hard to overstate the fever for hydroelectric power that has infected southeast Asia in recent years. Hydro power has more than tripled across the region since 1980, a growth that is pinned primarily to the mighty waters of the Mekong, the huge and powerful river that winds its way from the Tibetan–Qinghai Plateau, through …
Inflight Recycling: Still Up in the Air
I was on a Qantas flight in eastern Australia last week when a flight attendant handed me what looked like a fancy barf bag. It was, in fact, not a fancy barf bag, but a fancy recycling bag, in which I was instructed to place everything that was not a can, plastic cup or a bottle. The idea is that the flight attendants collect and …