By John R. Platt Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. In 1951 a member of the Nigerian Forestry Service collected specimens of a rare tree in the highlands of northwestern Cameroon. It was soon identified as a member of the Vepris genus, a group of 80 or so large tree species […]
By John R. Platt It’s a rare scientific paper that cites both biologist E.O. Wilson and AC/DC guitarist Angus Young. In fact, there’s only one paper with that distinction: Testing the AC/DC hypothesis: Rock and roll is noise pollution and weakens a trophic cascade, published this week in the journal Ecology and Evolution. As you […]
By John R. Platt Looking for a few new books to read during your summer vacation? Look no further than these 15 new environmentally themed titles coming out in July. Publishers have scheduled some thought-provoking new titles for just about every type of reader, from nature lovers to history buffs, and from political activists to […]
By Dipika Kadaba The amount of artificial lighting is steadily increasing every year around the planet. It’s a cause for celebration in remote villages in Africa and the Indian sub-continent that recently gained access to electricity for the first time, but it is also harming the health and well-being of residents of megacities elsewhere that […]
By John R. Platt Sometimes a couple of kids can help change the world. Siblings Carter and Olivia Ries founded their nonprofit One More Generation (OMG) in 2009, when they were just 8 and 7 years old, out of a desire to protect the world’s endangered species. Their journey to heal the planet has taken […]
By John R. Platt We’ve made it past Memorial Day weekend, which means that for many of us it’s time to start planning our summer reading lists. Luckily there are plenty of new environmentally themed books coming out in June—more than any one person could read at the beach or by the campfire, but enough […]
By John R. Platt This year the U.S. could experience its first bird extinction in more than three decades. That’s the warning from the scientists and conservationists working to protect the critically endangered Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus). Once common in the grasslands of central Florida, this geographically isolated subspecies has experienced a catastrophic […]
By John R. Platt Say good-bye to the “ghost cat.” This week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the eastern cougar (Puma concolor couguar) to be extinct and removed it from the endangered species list. This news, sad though it is, has been a long time coming. The big cats, once native to […]
By John R. Platt What do the southern red-breasted plover, ultramarine lorikeet and Rimatara reed warbler have in common? Here’s the unfortunate answer: They’re just a few of the bird species newly listed as critically endangered in the latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The update, released last month by BirdLife […]
568k 
233k 
41k 
Subscribe 
