Sylvain Cordier

Turn It Down: How Human Noise Is Disturbing the Whales

The residents of California’s Santa Monica Bay have some rather noisy neighbors—and they’re not happy about it. That is the conclusion of a new study which shows that blue whales feeding off the coast of California stop calling to each other when a nearby naval base powers up its sonar for training exercises. It’s not [...]

Dennis Flaherty

How U.S. Soldiers Are Fueling the Endangered Species Trade

You’re a U.S. soldier, abroad on your first deployment in Afghanistan. Like any world traveler, you want to bring a souvenir back home to the family, something they could never get at home. So you visit the local market on base, where Afghan vendors sell carpets, trinkets and clothing. And you pick out something really [...]

Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey/photo by Lori Oberhofer, National Park Service

Invaders: How Burmese Pythons Are Devouring the Everglades

Burmese pythons are eating machines. An adult snake can grow to nearly 20 ft., and it can eat everything from raccoons to bobcats to deer to alligators, killing its prey by constriction and then swallowing them whole. On the jungle food chain, Burmese pythons rest near the top. Burmese pythons are also — as the [...]

Study Shows that Bluefin Tuna Is Being Severely Overfished

There’s a reason why scientists like to refer to the bluefin tuna as the “tigers of the sea.” The fish can grow to as much as 1,500 lbs. (700 kg), and can swim over 40 mph. Scientists who’ve tagged bluefin tuna in the wild to track their movements are amazed at how far the fish [...]

How Climate Change Is Turning Plants and Animals into Refugees

Regardless of what Rick Perry and the rest of Republican presidential candidate field believe (except for you, Jon Huntsman), climate change is real and it’s happening. The questions for the 98% of climate researchers who accept the consensus on man-made global warming is how fast the climate is changing, and what impact it will have on [...]

Put Down That Spoon and Back Away From The Soup

The last place you’d expect to see the folks from CSI sleuthing around is the bowl of soup you’re having for lunch — unless, of course, you’re having shark fin soup. In that case, you may be enabling an environmental crime, and now there’s DNA evidence that can give you away. People who grew up [...]

Whales in Motion

“They say the sea is cold,” D.H. Lawrence wrote, “but the sea contains the hottest blood of all.” Whales aren’t just physically majestic, but as warm-blooded mammals who give birth to live young, they provide a human link to an underwater region that can often feel so alien. Still, between the last vestiges of whale [...]

GoDaddy CEO on Shooting an Elephant: I’m Not Sorry

GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons ignited an Internet firestorm when he uploaded a video of himself hunting and killing an elephant in Zimbabwe. What video? That would be this one: So is Parsons sorry for the elephant hunt—or at the very least, sorry that he put it up on the Internet? Absolutely not, as an uncontrite [...]

The Next Great Extinction Could Be Coming Sooner Than You Think

It’s no secret that wildlife around the world is under severe stress. The most recent Red List from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated that 33% of the species evaluated by the group are at least threatened. The causes are many—hunting, disease, habitat loss, invasive species, even climate change—but they mostly boil [...]

Why the Aflockalypse Is Business As Usual For Biodiversity—And Why That’s Not Good

Call it the Aflockalypse, the Aquapalypse or some other clever term that will soon be trending on Twitter. What’s clear is that something odd seems to going on with the birds in the sky and the fish in the waters. First on New Year’s Day, the residents of Beebe, Arkansas awoke to find thousands of [...]