Rabbits make life hell for penguins, seabirds

The World Wildlife Fund warns that a population explosion of rabbits is threatening a remote Australian island’s seabird populations. That’s right, rabbits. We Americans think of them as cute, harmless long-eared friends that occasionally lay chocolate eggs or hybridize with antelopes. But in That Other Hemisphere, they are threatening a 4-million-strong seabird colony using little [...]

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Has the climate change point finally tipped?

There’s been mounting evidence, since last year’s alphabet-depleting hurricane season, that the public are finally starting to get climate change. And that includes not just feeling sheepish or helpless about it, but even being interested in learning more about it. Al Gore’s personal best in communication is still in some theaters around the country. Better [...]

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Schrodinger’s woodpecker

The world at large has been enveloped in another fracas over the being or not-being of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The story to date: (OSHA notice: this summary forgoes the religiously overtoned nicknames of the bird out of sheer nausea at their overuse.) The ivory-billed woodpecker (is/was) a big black-and-white woodpecker with a gleaming pale hatchet [...]

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