by Sarah E. McQuate | Dec 10, 2016 | Posts
I recently photographed a banana slug for a short article I was writing about banana slug slime for the Santa Cruz Hilltromper, a website for nature lovers in the area. “Okay, now turn your head to the left… down a little… actually can you crawl up this rock a bit...
by Ula Chrobak | Nov 22, 2016 | Posts
The latest news release by the U.S. Forest Service reads ominously: the Sierra Nevada has over 100 million dead trees. Swathes of standing dry trees infested with insects populate the Stanislaus, Sequoia, and Sierra National Forests. Climate change, a five-year...
by Yasemin Saplakoglu | Nov 21, 2016 | Posts
She stood at the fire line, waiting. The sky blurred just above the hill, introducing the arrival of the flames. Crackling patches of yellow and red crept their way down the hill toward her. She heard an ensemble of croaking. A bunch of fast-moving black dots, soon...
by Sukee Bennett | Nov 16, 2016 | Posts
I watched nearly 2,000 baby olive ridley sea turtles hatch while working on a sea turtle conservation project in Costa Rica. Most of them were born in our human-made hatchery from wild eggs we had relocated— each hatchling crawled and tumbled upon dozens of siblings...
by Sarah Derouin | Nov 15, 2016 | Posts
I come from the land of tornadoes in the Upper Midwest. I’ve spent nights in the basement, watched rotating clouds for much longer than was wise and picked up softball-sized hail in the aftermath of the storm. But now I live in California, land of earthquakes, and my...
by Sarah E. McQuate | Nov 7, 2016 | Posts
In 2000, my husband’s cat made the news. The Cerro Grande Fire had chased his family from their home in Los Alamos, New Mexico but everything happened so fast that they didn’t have time to find their cat. When the cat ambled into the house a few hours later,...
by Aylin Woodward | Nov 6, 2016 | Posts
Meet Makana, the only captive Laysan albatross in North America. An ambassador for her species, she takes the stage at the Monterey Bay Aquarium everyday at 1:30 sharp, helping guests understand how human-made plastics—single-use bags, straws, water bottles—can end up...
by Ramin Skibba | Apr 14, 2016 | Posts
The man in the shirt and tie with thin-rimmed glasses, a graying beard, and slightly tousled hair spoke with confidence and carefully chosen words. He was being interviewed on “Inside Story,” a TV news program on Al-Jazeera America, at its San Francisco studio. The...
by Lindzi Wessel | Jan 18, 2016 | Posts
Lately it seems like the field of biomedical research has been incessantly presenting society with a whirlwind of game changing medical advances. Among other exciting recent developments, scientists have used 3-D printing to implant an artificial trachea in a sick...
by Lindzi Wessel | Jan 18, 2016 | Posts
As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the woods. Every summer my parents would pack my four siblings and me into the back of our turquoise Ford Windstar and we’d set off for adventure in whatever western wilderness destination we’d chosen that year. Smokey Bear was...
by Brendan Bane | Jan 15, 2016 | Posts
A dangerous outsider recently washed onto Southern California’s shores. The visitor, likely exhausted from tossing to and fro in frigid waters, was a stranger to our land. It inspired confusion and caution in those who found it. Who was this strange alien? It was a...
by Bethany Augliere | Jan 3, 2016 | Posts
Conventional collars show scientists where in the forest a wolf is, but new technology also tells you what the animal is doing hour by hour For years, researchers have been able to track where wolves roam using GPS technology—but that’s about it. Without...
