Animals
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Nothing says eco-tourism like a 21-foot crocodile
What do you do with a suspected man-eating crocodile the size of a small aircraft? Make it the highlight of an eco-tourism park. At least, that's what wildlife authorities in the Philippines are doing with a 21-foot crocodile they caught this weekend. Lord, if only Steve Irwin were here to see this.
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Stranded penguin is going home
Here's your awesome for the day. A penguin named Happy Feet washed up on a New Zealand beach in June, and promptly made himself sick by eating a bunch of sand that he mistook for snow. It's not clear how he wound up 2,000 miles from his Antarctic habitat, but Happy Feet is now well and is getting a lift back home.
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Shining light on Obama’s tar sands pipeline decision
This week, President Obama will find hundreds more people in front of the White House – us included – willing to go to jail for peacefully protesting the President’s short-sighted decision to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama’s decision on this enormous fossil fuel project will not be a quiet deal with oil industry […]
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Panda poop could revolutionize biofuels
One down side of biofuels like ethanol is that they rely on easily processed crops that are also staple foods. The more farm space is given over to raising corn, soybeans, and sugar for fuels, the less is available for raising those crops to feed humans. Luckily, scientists have just discovered microbes that could help turn waste plant matter like corn stalks and wood chips into fuel. All they needed was a little bit of panda poo.
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Koch Industries lobbying puts over 100 million Americans in danger
Recent Greenpeace analysis of lobbying disclosure records reveals that since 2005, Koch Industries has hired more lobbyists than Dow and Dupont to fight legislation that could protect over 100 million Americans from what national security experts say is a catastrophic risk from the bulk storage of poison gasses at dangerous chemical facilities such as oil […]
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Whales hanging out in New York
First dolphins, now whales — sea mammals in New York City are bigger than Cats! Urban nature blogger Matthew Wills caught a humpback whale frolicking off Sandy Hook, N.J., within sight of the city. (He's got some great pictures over at his blog.) Wills was dismayed by the floating trash in the bay, not to […]
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Otters are back in England
Once nearly extinct in England, otters have now returned to every county, indicating that rivers are at their healthiest in decades. Conservationists had predicted that it would be another 10 years before the otters reached this level of repopulation, so it's a real triumph for the iittle dudes. Not to mention an overwhelming stroke of good fortune for Brits, who can now watch otters play from the comfort of their homes, the lucky bastards.
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Dolphins take Manhattan
New York is becoming quite the haven of wildlife! There's the pigeons, the giant monkey on the Empire State Building, and now dolphins have been spotted in New York Harbor. The frisky sea critters haven't gotten into an empire state of mind in two years, so this is a big deal — it means the […]
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Sand kitten gives hope for near-extinct species, is ridiculously cute
The Israeli sand cat is extinct in the wild, so its only hope is breeding programs in captivity. The birth of this stupifyingly cute fuzzball at Safari Zoo in Tel Aviv is therefore really good news — it could help put the species on the path to recovery and reintroduction. But mostly we just like to look […]
