December 27, 2019
Conservation funding up
for renewal
The Hill
Photo by Buschap/flick r
In America our public lands are our greatest national treasure. They are the inheritance that we all share equally, no matter who we are or from where we come. They not only encompass our national forests, national wildlife refuges and wilderness areas; they also provide us with access to some of the most awe-inspiring hunting, angling and recreational opportunities in the world — majestic places where the game and fish are plentiful, where memories are made and where lifelong traditions are formed. 

But our public lands are increasingly vulnerable. In recent years we’ve seen sensitive public lands habitat opened up to irresponsible development and  rollbacks of fundamental environmental  laws.

The need for programs like the Land Water Conservation Fund, one of our greatest assets in conserving key areas and expanding access to our public lands, has never been greater. Right now funding for LWCF is uncertain and we are facing a critical moment to protect it.

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Can wildlife
easily adapt to
extreme winters?  
By Jennifer S. Holland/National Wildlife
Photo by Julie Falk/flickr
An arctic fox pads over the snowy landscape. Her compact body and short limbs limit her exposure to cold, thick-furred paws thwart frostbite and a dense coat insulates her core. Come stormy weather, she’ll seek shelter or create her own, body curled up, nose tucked into paws, furry tail a warm embrace.

Like other wildlife species evolved in northern climates, Vulpes lagopusis beautifully  adapted  to winter. But will that always be true?

While today’s  changing climate  is raising average winter temperatures in most places, it’s also bringing periods of intense cold, tumultuous winter storms and severe icy conditions. For some wildlife, these fluctuating  extremes  may prove too much to bear.

In Canada, islands crumbling into the sea  
By Brady Dennis/The Washington Post
Photo by Christian Koval/flickr
High on a bluff overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Adele Chiasson no longer ventures into her backyard for a simple reason: It is falling into the sea.

“I’m afraid to go out there,” the widow said one afternoon from the safety of her kitchen. She nodded toward the 70-foot-tall, red sandstone cliffs out back that creep closer with each passing year. “You never know when a section will fall off.”

The more than 12,000 residents of this windswept Canadian archipelago are facing a growing number of gut-wrenching choices, as extreme climate change transforms the land and water around them. Season after season, storm after storm, it is becoming clearer that the sea, which has always sustained these islands, is now their greatest threat.

For the love
of turkey vultures
By Larry Pynn/Hakai
Photo by RS2Photography/flickr
Dave Manning stands atop a craggy precipice on North Pender Island in southwestern British Columbia and recalls his “younger days” when he descended the near-vertical face in search of turkey vulture nests secreted in the rocks.

Manning is 75, and his perilous forays here at Oak Bluffs Park occurred as recently as three years ago. “I’ve slidden down, had a couple of close calls,” he says, as we watch an afternoon wind hurry currents across a shimmery Salish Sea. “I got all scraped on the blackberries and the rocks and everything else. I wouldn’t try it now with my bad knee and back. I’m a little too old to be dancing around in remote areas.”

Shaded from the spring sun by a wide-brimmed hat and clip-on sunglasses, Manning spots an adult turkey vulture riding the warm thermals. It is distinguished by dark-brown wings—paler on the underside’s trailing edge and tips—that wobble in flight and span 1.7 meters or more. The raptor’s name is derived from its red, featherless head reminiscent of that of a wild turkey.

Florida panthers rebounding, still needing help
By Eric Seeger/Nature
Photo by USFWS/flickr  
Ghost sightings are becoming increasingly common in southwest Florida. Sometimes hunters’ remote camera traps will catch grainy grayish images at night. The subjects’ eyes have a spectral glow from the reflection of the camera’s infrared light. Live daytime sightings are usually brief: a quick glimpse before the ethereal figure vanishes into the dense underbrush of palmettos.

These ghosts—endangered Florida panthers—are real. That they exist at all is a near miracle, as the large cats almost vanished in the 1970s, when scientists estimated there were maybe 20 Florida panthers still surviving in the wild. With intensive human intervention, the panther population is estimated to have grown tenfold over the past 40 years, but they are still extremely rare animals.


"I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape --the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. "








– Andrew Wyeth
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