Environment
ArchiveOn Thursday, November 8, at 9:53 a.m., Dylan Grenier took a camera down to Collins Cove in Santa Cruz, California, and recorded discarded drug paraphenalia, a stash of supplies, trash, and a number of people hanging out and sleeping near that scene. Later in…
Last week, the Earth Island Institute feted six young activists at its annual Brower Youth Awards ceremony in San Francisco. Each year, the organization, founded by climber and firebrand David Brower, honors the country鈥檚 next generation of environmental leaders who are using creativity…
Sandy passing west of Hispaniola. Photo: NASA Goddard Hurricane Sandy did not hit Haiti directly. It passed to the west, crossing over Cuba. Even so, it dropped roughly 20 inches of rain on…
Hurricane Sandy after landfall. Photo: NASA Goddard A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Revkin celebrated the fifth birthday of his…
Yesterday, Vimeo selected a video called Rockaway Needs Us as a staff pick. It's just the latest video that shows the effects of Sandy, from the recreational to devastation. The shorts range from a…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RhQktHY9aZgA video showing Sandy鈥檚 life from October 23 to October 31. It was as a nine-year-old kid in Reading, Pennsylvania, that University of Miami scientist Brian McNoldy developed a fascination with hurricanes. 鈥淚 think most of us have a storm,鈥 he…
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Kate Rawles on her Mexico-to-Canada tour. Photo: Chris Loynes Kate Rawles is an outdoor philosopher. That is a title she coined herself, and it is accurate in more than one way. She spends her professional life thinking about, talking about,…
Photo: PublicDomainPictures I saw my first polar bear of the trip before I even boarded my flight from Chicago to Winnipeg. Submerged in water up to its snout, it stared at me from a World Wildlife Fund poster hanging by the men's bathroom in Concourse F.聽…
There were no shortage of heroes as Hurricane Sandy made its way from the Caribbean, up along the coast of the southeastern United States, into New Jersey, and then across Pennsylvania. Hospital personnel evacuated patients from at least one facility that lost power. Firemen…
A composite image of Sandy making landfall at night. Photo: NASA/Goddard The death toll from Sandy in the United States has risen to 75, according to the Associated Press.
Here is a view of Sandy's life from above. It was recorded by NASA's GOES-13 Satellite. It begins on October 23, when Tropical Depression 18 morphed into Tropical Storm Sandy. Before that, on October 22, at roughly 11:00 a.m., about 320 miles southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, a hot towering…
NYC, Avenue C at East 6th Street, Oct. 29, 2012. Photo: David Shankbone/Flickr The loss of life and property damage from Superstorm Sandy is still being tallied, but the catastrophe is pointing a spotlight on the need for cities to adapt…
Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy as seen from space Photo: NOAA GOES-13 When Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, around 8 p.m. last night, it lived up to the deadly reputation forecasters feared, and the death toll from the storm has continued to rise…
A pair of polar bears walks across the ice near Churchill. Photo: FloridaStock/Shutterstock The first European to encounter the polar bears of what is now Churchill, Manitoba, was Jens Munk, a Norwegian explorer who wintered on the southern…
Patagonia National Park, under construction. Photo: Eli Steltenpohl “Buying the land was the easy part,” Kristine Tompkins told a packed house during a presentation at the San Francisco Patagonia retail store last week. She was referring to the 2.2 million acres that she and…
Photo: NASA Goddard Photo and Video/Flickr New York, New Jersey, and Maryland are already flooded. Sandy is coming and doesn't look like it'll be another over-hyped New York-centric storm. Record storm surge is expected. Emergency declarations have been signed. Presidential…
Hurricane Sandy expands, taken Sunday, October 28, at 9:00 a.m. Photo: NOAA GOES-13 Satellite As scientists feared late last week, Hurricane Sandy has morphed into…
Left: BLM land open to solar development before 2011; right: BLM's current 17 solar energy zone. Maps: NRDC Wind, solar, geothermal and other so-called green energy sources might not spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but they're far from benign. Ask any bird conservationist…
Bikini Atoll, a tiny ring of islands halfway between Hawaii and Australia, is a world-class diving destination and home to one of the Pacific's last great fishing grounds. So where are all the tourists? Welcome to heaven on earth, where the vestiges of hell lie just below the surface.
Looking for which candidate's economic beliefs are best suited to the present day? Wondering who's better suited to take office should the next president become incapacitated? Well, you've come to the wrong place.
Canus lupus. Photo: S.R. Maglione/Shutterstock In children鈥檚 literature, wolves pretty much always get a bad rap. Think Little Red Riding Hood, the three poor pigs, and pretty much every cute, furry, unsuspecting critter in Richard Scarry鈥檚 entire opus. In our house, we make a point…
Aurora Borealis as seen from Space. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Flickr On October 4 and 5, a coronal mass ejection from the sun sent an explosion of particles speeding toward earth. Three days later, those particles hit the earth's magnetic…
Photographer Chase Jarvis was sailing about an hour south of Cape Town, South Africa, when he first saw the fins. They broke the surface of the ocean dozens at a time. The fins belonged to common dolphins, and soon Jarvis noticed hundreds, and then…
The video doesn't show the spark, the inciting moment that led the impala herd to bolt across the road directly into the path of a leopard crouching in the tall grass. But it does show the climax, the predator exploding from the brush into an esophagus-targeted leap that lands…
On May 30, 2012, at 3:00 P.M. MST, a series of thunderstorms formed over central and south central Kansas. They dropped golf ball-sized hail before lining up into a dark vanguard that barraged the countryside ahead with 70 mile…
Great white shark. Photo: David Stephens/Shutterstock On Thursday, the government of Western Australia released a plan that will allow the killing of great white sharks that venture…
Jugita Krilaviciute, left, works the soil during the Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project in the Trail Creek drainage on Thursday, June 2, 2011. The Vail Resorts Hayman Restoration Project is in the second of a three year, $750,000 partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and The Rocky…
Chimney Rock. Photo: USDA.gov/Flickr On Friday, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation designating 4,726 acres of land in southwestern Colorado as Chimney Rock National Monument.
The record low compared to the average minimum. Photo: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio The extreme melt of Arctic sea ice has stopped for the year, but only after setting a record low for area covered, scientists…
Dolphins communicate with each other, but can they communicate with us? Marine biologist Denise Herzing is drawing on decades of research, a vast digital library of whistles and clicks, and new computer wizardry designed to bridge the species gap. Tim Zimmermann goes deep with one of history's grandest experiments.
Filmmaker Chris Tangey recorded the above video of a fire whirl whisking through the Australian Outback near Alice Springs on September 11. Since then, the clip has swerved from news sites to blogs to social media around the world. In its…
Activist Tim DeChristopher, currently serving out a sentence for fraud in Littleton, Colorado, reacts to losing his appeal last Friday and responds to criticism generated by a post in which he suggested that environmentalists should not vote for Obama
For almost a century, the world's hottest temperature was believed to be a 136-degree Fahrenheit measurement recorded in El Azizia, Libya, on September 13, 1922. This month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) threw that record out. They gave their reasons in…
A pika in its talus home. Photo: Karunakar Rayker By Mary Ellen Hannibal When Chris Ray got started studying pika, she could not have anticipated that these small rabbit relatives would one day become a poster child…
Everyone experiences the occasional bad day at the office, and having an alternative career to fantasize about is a reliable coping strategy. Marine biologist. Fly-fishing guide. Ski patroller. A good friend and writer I've worked with on many stories over the years used to suffer from chronic bouts of…
After years of sounding the climate-change alarm, writer Bill McKibben realized that gentle persuasion wasn鈥檛 cutting it. So he got mad. Then he got busy: tweeting, organizing, protesting, getting arrested, and becoming Big Oil鈥檚 biggest threat.
Yosemite National Park confirmed on Thursday that a ninth person had contracted hantavirus, according to Reuters. The park visitor, from California, has recovered. The notice came a day after the park notified roughly 230,000 people about the outbreak by email, according to the…
In a last-ditch attempt to preserve some of the only green spaces left on the eastern edge of Jerusalem, the city plans to build a series of national parks with an extensive network of trails. Is this an honest effort to encourage tourism, or a political attempt to keep Arab neighborhoods from expanding?
Michael Lewis, President Barack Obama. Photo: Official White House Photograph/Pete Souza Reporter Michael Lewis followed President Barack Obama for six months in order to write the profile “Obama's Way.” At its core, the Vanity Fair story is a…
Photo: Egan Snow/Flickr As summer wanes and garden harvests start to dwindle, this news lands with a thud: a recent study performed at Stanford University indicated that eating organic produce doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean eating more nutritious produce. If you figured this would…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nV4XcnNBPm8 Once again, Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown himself into an obscure outdoor adventure. This time he donned a white suit and goggles before taking off in an ultralight to guide six endangered Siberian Cranes through the air. Andrew E. Kramer's…
The story behind the otter-exclusion zone, a stretch of water on the California coast from Point Conception to the Mexican border where otters are barred by Congress from swimming
Grizzly print, and a notebook. Photo: 国产吃瓜黑料rs and Scientists for Conservation Rachel Carson earned a master's degree in zoology from John Hopkins University and spent most of her career working as a marine biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife…
Fly-by drinking. Photo: Ofer Levy/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012 With a wing span of up to five feet, the grey-headed flying fox is the largest bat…
Delicate Arch, Arches National Park. Photo: Ryan Dearth Last year, as part of his Call to Action plan to revise and improve the way our national parks are managed, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis asked a committee of…
Soon after a century-old mill dam was destroyed by flooding, the small creek behind Jeff Opperman's house played host to dozens of steelhead making their way up the Chagrin River. The freshwater scientist with The Nature Conservancy used their arrival as an opportunity to reflect on nature in the age of human domination.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WEe1bVjORN4 The lines, curves, and whorls made by ocean currents in NASA's Perpetual Ocean video look like they were taken straight out of Vincent van Gogh's A Starry Night. All the pretty strokes came courtesy of the space agency's Scientific Visualization Studio, which…
Tropical Storm Isaac, August 28. Photo: NASA The city lights all appear on as Tropical Storm Isaac nears the Gulf Coast in this satellite image taken just after midnight on August 28.
Inside the unsolved killing that has an idyllic lakeside town reeling
Fisherman. Photo: Piotr Wawrzyniuk/Shutterstock Here鈥檚 an outdoor recreation stat worth breaking out at the water cooler. One out of every one hundred dollars of all goods and services produced in the United States in 2011 was due to hunting, fishing, and…
Yao Ming in Kenya鈥檚 Samburu National Reserve. Photo: Kristian Schmidt/WildAid Yao Ming is a giant man, but he paled in comparison to the corpse of the elephant stripped of ivory that lay at his…
Photo: Bradleygee/Flickr One point four million. That's how many cigarette butts volunteers collected during beach clean-up events in the United States in 2008 alone, according to Ocean Conservancy. Think of how many they missed. And consider all the butts you've seen tossed off…
On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted and its northern flank collapsed, leading to the largest landslide in U.S. history. Volcanic debris from the explosion, collapse of the flank, and subsequent lahars spread out over roughly 230 square miles. The…
Red means it's the warmest month ever. Photo: NOAA This past July was the hottest month in the recorded history of the lower 48 states. A severe drought and…
The National Resources Defense Council's latest annual “Toxic Power” report contains good news for air quality, namely that toxic air pollution from power plants decreased roughly 19 percent from 2009 to 2010. The improvement came as many plants switched to burning natural gas instead…
Earlier this spring, Google's Fernanda Vi茅gas and Martin Wattenberg created a living wind map of the United States. The interactive graphic displays surface wind data from the…
On May 13, 2011, two months after a tsunami had devastated the coast of Japan, professional photographic retoucher Becci Manson headed to the country to volunteer. She traveled there with All Hands to help with the clean up,…
This is a moment that never gets old, especially since it seems every year it is captured in more detail, in slower motion, with just enough explanation. It's a great white shark breaching in the waters off of South Africa to bite a seal dummy, which it spits out…
We all live downstream. Photo: Flickr/Kevin Krejci Next week, tens of thousands of manufacturers, retailers, media and marketers of outdoor gear will convene in Salt Lake City for the Outdoor Retailer (OR) Summer Market. Among them will be many…
Captain Don Voss, marine pollution from a diver's POV. Photos: Marine Cleanup Initiative, Inc. When he returned, wounded, from serving in Vietnam, doctors told Don Voss he wouldn't walk again. But Voss, now a 64-year-old ship captain, turned to swimming as therapy. With more…
Michael Kodas is chasing the ever-growing forest inferno all throughout Colorado
When a YouTube video showing a "big-ass" shark snatching a tasty red drum off the end of a fishing pole went viral last week, Chris Dixon, who lives on the water in the area, wondered if he should be more concerned. He spoke to Arnold Postell, a senior biologist at the South Carolina Aquarium, to find out.
After years of warnings and years of inaction, our forests are on fire and the blaze should only continue to grow.
This illegal deer stand is bigger than most Manhattan studios. Photo: St. Louis County Land and Minerals Dept. Deer hunters wait. They find a good spot in the forest, and they wait. To get a better vantage, they might climb into a tree or build a…
Give money to your favorite environment-protecting non-profit without spending a dime. Clif Bar is inviting outdoor enthusiasts to protect the places we play by sharing photos and stories of our adventures on聽MeettheMoment.com. (Clif Bar's Meet the Moment is also sponsoring 国产吃瓜黑料's So There…
Photo: Fremlin/CC 2.0/Flickr Going into 2012 Montana's wolf population exceeded 600. Looking for more ways to keep the population in check, the state's Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) Commission passed new rules on Thursday, July 12, that will allow wolves to be trapped.
World-renowned scientist E.O. Wilson did not take up calculus until he was 32 years old. When he did finally tackle the subject, he sat next to undergraduate students taking his introductory biology class. He uses this anecdote as a way into his five…
To get things between the 740 islands of the Falklands, a lot of flying is needed. Much of it is done by one of the four pilots in the Falkland Islands Government Air Service. Pilot Troyd Bowles delivers everything from tourists to remote lodges to farm animals to remote pastures…
Surveying the beaches in his home state of North Carolina with a world-renowned erosion expert, David Gessner considers the folly of trying to deny what all the sandbags and misguided legislation in the world can never stop: the rising sea
Photo: Shutterstock/Amy Walters Last month, the House of Representatives passed an omnibus bill that would exempt the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from more than 10 important environmental laws, including the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and…
An eyewitness report from the front lines as protests against a massive gold mine provoke violence and retaliation
Colorado's hugely destructive Waldo Canyon fire is still burning and politicians are trying to capitalize on the disaster. Please, knock it off.
For better and (only sometimes) worse, elite athletes are our role models. We admire their discipline and commitment; their strength and skill inspire us to reach higher in our own lives. When I talked to alpinist Hilaree O'Neill last month by cell phone from Everest Base Camp,…
Hui Yu Kim, “Boating Fun” (Atkins鈥 Young Environmental Photographer of the Year: Under 16 Highly Commended) Don't let the incredibly long and clunky name turn you off: The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management's annual…
Cougar. Photo: Shutterstock Cougars are on the rise in the Midwest. From 1990 to 2008, the number of sightings confirmed by wildlife professionals increased. That's good news for fans of big cats, which were extirpated from most of that area around…
Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photo: Wilderness Explorers Newsweek said last week that visiting Guyana should be on your Bucket List. Then USA Today said just about the same thing. We first sang Guyana's praises…
Thirty-five years ago, a national recession and high fuel prices led to the opening of the massive, controversial Trans-Alaska Pipeline System鈥攁nd a host of problems and pollution that came with it. Sound familiar?