The multilateral body charged with regulating fishing and protecting ecosystems in the Southern Ocean reached no agreements on establishing new marine protected areas or adopting new krill-fishing management measures at its recent annual meeting. The 45th meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) took place Oct. 19-30 in Hobart, […]
The seals that shouldn’t exist: How did 100,000 end up trapped in the middle of Siberia, a whopping 2,000 miles from the ocean?
Deep in the Russian wilderness, over 3000km from the nearest ocean, 100,000 seals live on a huge frigid lake. They are Baikal seals, known in Russian as nerpas, and are the only seal species found in freshwater. So how did the Baikal seal end up living in the middle of Siberia? Was it stranded as […]
North America’s most widely distributed game bird is under threat
Every November, hundreds of hunters descend on four designated wilderness areas in southern Ohio in pursuit of the elusive ruffed grouse. But not this year. Dispersed across an enormous range from the southern Appalachian mountains to Alaska, the ruffed grouse is one of the most popular game birds in North America. But for the first […]
“I shudder to think how often I’ve courted disaster, unknowingly, like this…”
It’s the last day of a week long rafting trip I’m guiding on the Canning River, which snakes from northern Alaska’s Brooks Range into the Arctic Coastal Plain. Sipping coffee in the quiet of the morning, and looking south from the top of the bluff where we have pitched our tents, I notice a white […]
‘They have schedules to follow’: how fast ferries can threaten endangered whales in the Mediterranean
Slowing vessels is the most effective mitigation strategy when rerouteing isn’t possible, according to conservation NGO Oceancare. The sea between Valencia and Genoa, which includes the Pelagos sanctuary, is a key cetacean habitat, home to about two-thirds of the Mediterranean’s fin whales and more than a fifth of its sperm whales. In July 2023, the […]
“He pinned the rival and could have killed him but let him go.” Meet the two most famous wolves on the planet who bred a legendary dynasty
The wolves of Yellowstone National Park in the US state of Wyoming are without doubt the most famous wolves on the entire planet. Their lives have been documented in such microscopic detail that they we know as much about them as we do some celebrities. Their stories come across like something out of a tv […]
Migrating seabirds face a surprising problem: jet lag
Seabirds returning from foraging trips can be thrown hundreds of miles off course by a form of jet lag that arises when their body clocks get out of sync with local time, researchers say. Tracking data from Manx shearwaters on the west coast of the UK revealed that when the birds returned home to their […]
It bakes its eggs in an oven and will probably abandon its babies, but is stubbornly faithful to its partner
To call the rufous hornero (Furnarius rufus) unprepossessing would be generous. Compared to the ostentatious plumage of other South American birds, its reddish-brown feathers are vanishingly modest. The species might escape notice entirely were it not for its architectural mastery. Hornero means baker in Spanish, in reference to the oven-shaped nests constructed by breeding pairs to protect […]