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  • Why prison inmates make great conservationists

    Kelli Bush, project manager for Washington state’s Sustainable Prisons Project, works with an unlikely group of conservationists: prison inmates. In collaboration with scientists, students, community groups, and prison staff, inmates at four Washington correctional facilities play an integral part in habitat and species restoration efforts. They raise Oregon spotted frogs (endangered in Washington), Taylor’s checkerspot […]

  • Critical List: Keystone company calls route change ‘unconstitutional’; Perry hates Iowa

    The Keystone XL company thinks changing the pipeline's route could be unconstitutional. Rick Perry appears to want to piss off Iowa. He's against ethanol and now wind subsidies. Fracking probably caused an earthquake in England. Michael Mann, one of the Climategate scientists, is still fighting off groups that want access to his email. Levi Strauss […]

  • Halloween a day late: IPCC digs into the really scary stuff of climate change

    The International Panel on Climate Change is gearing up to release its next big report, and climate deniers are gearing up to poke futilely at it, claiming it's wrong in every way possible. But if you, like a normal human being, believe in science, you can get a sneak peek — the Associated Press got […]

  • Treatment of circus elephants worse than you ever imagined

    Mother Jones has a long investigation into the treatment of elephants at Ringling Brothers. In short, the conditions they live in are beyond horrible. According to records and testimony turned up in court, trainers: beat elephants with hooks and other tools, while maintaining the animals are trained using only verbal cues and tenderly cared for […]

  • World’s only white kiwi pulls through surgery

    Manukura, the world's only known white kiwi (not an albino!), had endoscopic surgery Friday to break up a large stone she'd swallowed. Kiwis normally eat small stones to help with digestion, but Manukura's eyes were bigger than her stomach, and the stone got stuck in her gizzard. Doctors operated using a laser that's usually used […]

  • Great, we have three-eyed fish now

    Fishermen trawling a nuclear-plant-fed reservoir in Córdoba, Argentina have caught a three-eyed wolf fish. Like everyone else who's writing about this story, I'm illustrating this post with a picture of Blinky, the nuclear fish from The Simpsons, because the real fish is super ugly.  They don't know for sure yet whether the fish's mutation is […]

  • Mitt Romney, political windsock, flips to climate change denial

    If there's one thing Mitt Romney's good at, it's turning directly into whatever political winds are blowing through the Republican base. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that in a speech at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pa., he just said this: My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this […]

  • High and dry: Southwest drought means rising food prices

    This pond in Texas dried out by late June.Photo: agrilifetodayVery few urban dwellers have paid attention to the catastrophic drought in the Southwest that began nearly a year ago. But last month, as farmers and ranchers assessed the year’s harvest, it became clear it had knocked back their yields and sales, while driving their costs […]

  • Flooding hits Italian countryside; climate change will bring more torrential rains

    Americans may not care about weather-related disasters in places like Tuvalu, but it's possible that mudslides and flooding devastating some of Italy's most beautiful tourist ares will make a blip on the country's collective radar screen. (How will we prove we're cultured if Italy's one big mud pile?) Six people have died and hundreds more […]

  • Underwater cities: Climate change begins to reshape the urban landscape

    Flooding in Miami.Photo: kthreadDan Kipness, a retired fishing boat captain and a 60-year Miami Beach resident, has a video that offers a glimpse of where this coastal city is headed. In it, cars and trucks kick floodwater into the air as they drive down Miami Beach’s streets. This isn’t rainwater — the skies are at […]