Butterflies in the storm
BIOGRAPHIC — Battling rising seas and creeping asphalt, scientists race to save two endangered species.
Posts Categorized: wildlife
Sea change
BIOGRAPHIC — The Arctic Ocean is beginning to look and act more like the Atlantic. It’s a shift that threatens to upend an entire food web built on frigid waters.
High stakes in the High North
BIOGRAPHIC — A remote island that harbored the word’s last mammoths is becoming a holdout for Arctic wildlife once again.
Caribou genetics reveal shadow of climate change
Nature Ancient ice ages that shaped modern caribou populations may foretell animals’ fate in a warmer world. When ice sheets marched across North America 20,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, they devoured liveable areas for caribou and isolated them from their Eurasian relatives for thousands of years. Now researchers have evidence that such climatic events have sculpted the genetics of North American caribou, which may make the animals unable to adapt to future climate change. “Although the past is not a guarantee for the future, it makes me pessimistic about the future of the species,” says Glenn Yannic, … Read more…
In carbon sequestration, money grows on trees
Guyana’s tropical rainforests protected under the REDD program provide not just natural resources but an income stream to the country. Two hours south of Georgetown, Guyana, a paved highway recedes, giving way to a rutted red road gushing through thick rainforest. In its muddiest spots, the road swallows trucks and spits them out at dangerous angles. Many hours later, it leads to an area of protected land called Iwokrama, a Rhode Island-size forest in the heart of Guyana, crowded with ancient buttress-trunked trees draped in liana vines. [media-credit name=”Hannah Hoag” align=”alignleft” width=”300″][/media-credit]Since 2003, Jake Bicknell has been a fixture within … Read more…