Conservation (Page 8)

Protecting natural resources—from sea to sky—is about much more than planting a few trees.

Latest in Conservation

Animal deterring robotic wolf sentry

Robotic ‘Super Monster Wolves’ are guarding Japanese towns against bears

America’s war in Afghanistan devastated the country’s environment in ways that may never be cleaned up

America’s war in Afghanistan devastated the country’s environment in ways that may never be cleaned up

By Lynzy Billing/Inside Climate News

To protect wild bumblebees, people have to find them first

To protect wild bumblebees, people have to find them first

By Sarah Trent / High Country News

South Africa’s Missing sharks have been found

South Africa’s Missing sharks have been found

By David Shiffman / Hakai Magazine

Grizzly bear mom and cubs crossing road in Yellowstone National Park

Grizzlies are getting killed by roads, but the risks are bigger than roadkill

Rafflesia kemumu in the rainforest of Sumatra.

Earth’s stinkiest flower is threatened with extinction

By Laura Baisas

Why some clownfish are growing up too quickly

Why some clownfish are growing up too quickly

By Elizabeth Landau / Hakai Magazine

Manatee in a patch of sunlight

Sea the beauty of the world’s oceans with these 12 award-worthy photos

By Popular Science Team

Pacific Ocean storm seen from a research vessel's stern

When climate change throws the Pacific off balance, the world’s weather follows

Giant African land snail, an invasive species in Florida, on a red bucket

Invasive snails are chomping through Florida, and no one can stop them

By Maddi Langweil

Plastic fishing gear brings in a better catch, but there’s a big tradeoff

Plastic fishing gear brings in a better catch, but there’s a big tradeoff

By Alastair Bland/Hakai Magazine

Revo Foods 3D-printed salmon

The world’s first 3D-printed salmon is hitting store shelves, and it looks kind of good

Possum eating on a doorstep

11 jaw-dropping photos of marsupials, mushrooms, and more

By Popular Science Team

An orca whale swims around an ice flow with a crabeater seal and penguin on the ice.

New series offers an intimate look into how climate change impacts the lives of wildlife

By Laura Baisas

Polar bear decline is directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions

Polar bear decline is directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions

By Bob Berwyn/Inside Climate News

How an internet sleuth rekindled hope for the survival of the clown wedgefish

How an internet sleuth rekindled hope for the survival of the clown wedgefish

By Brian Howey/Hakai Magazine

MIT Van Atta Backscatter array closeup

This new subsea communications system can run on an iota of power

Colorful plastic cutlery on a white background. The United States uses more than 36 billion plastic utensils every year.

Millions of tons of waste could be eliminated by ‘nudging’ consumers to skip the plastic fork

By Laura Baisas

An eruption emerges from the ocean in a cloud of ash and a lightning strike.

The Tonga volcanic eruption reshaped the seafloor in mind-boggling ways

Two Atlantic puffins stand on a white rock above the ocean, with another group of puffins in the background, Atlantic puffins are sometimes nicknamed “sea parrots,” and their chicks hatch in Maine in early July.

Maine’s puffins show another year of remarkable resiliency

By Laura Baisas

Sunset over pacific ocean

The Pacific heat blob’s aftereffects are still warping ocean ecosystems

By Ethan Freedman/Hakai Magazine

Coral reef with a variety of hard and soft corals and tropical fish

Scientists are intentionally bleaching and ‘cryopreserving’ coral

Offshore wind turbines

We can’t ignore that offshore wind farms are part of marine ecosystems

By Becki Robins / Undark

Two Emperor penguin chicks standing on sea ice in Antarctica.

Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears

By Laura Baisas

This is what happens when feral cows take over a remote Alaskan island

This is what happens when feral cows take over a remote Alaskan island

By Jude Isabella/Hakai Magazine

Inside the fight to reclaim California’s biggest freshwater lake from algae

Inside the fight to reclaim California’s biggest freshwater lake from algae

By Tien Nguyen/Knowable Magazine

A coral reef just off of an island in Palau. Coral reefs in Palau provide critical habitats for a number of species and provide a storm barrier.

Some Pacific coral reefs can keep pace with a warming ocean

By Laura Baisas

The truth behind animal resistance memes

The truth behind animal resistance memes

By Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond / The Conversation

Elkhorn coral fragments in lab

The heroic effort to save Florida’s coral reef from a historic heatwave

By Michael Childress/The Conversation

Seedlings in yellow pots at a plant nursery in Glacier National Park

We need billions more baby trees to regrow US forests

By Carla Delgado

Dead humback whale on beach from aerial view

Dead whales and dinosaur eggs: 7 fascinating images by researchers

By Popular Science Team

A many tentacled feather star.

Behold a 20-armed, strawberry-shaped Antarctic sea creature

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

Members of the Dutch Tall Ship Oosterschelde wave goodbye from the quay in Rotterdam on August 4, 2023. The Rotterdam ship departs for a two-year world tour that scientist Charles Darwin made two centuries ago.

Mission to recreate Darwin’s scientific Beagle voyage sets sail

By Laura Baisas

A new snake species named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi was discovered during an expedition in Peru in May 2022. The copper scaled snake is seen here coiled on some brown grass.

Harrison Ford’s latest namesake is an Andean snake species

By Laura Baisas

Lead claimant Rikki Held, 22, confers with members of Our Children's Trust legal team before the start of the nation's first youth climate change trial at Montana's First Judicial District Court on June 12, 2023 in Helena, Montana.

Judge sides with youth activists in groundbreaking climate change lawsuit

By Laura Baisas

The Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone National Park, with steam rising and mountains in the distance. Temperatures at Yellowstone’s famous hot springs can reach 198 degrees Fahrenheit.

Don’t lick the toads and other things to avoid at national parks

By Laura Baisas

Maya Tilousi, member of the Hopi Tribe, Havasupai Tribe of Grand Canyon, and the Cheyanne and Arapaho Tribes, shakes hands with President Joe Biden at Red Butte Airfield, 25 miles south of Tusayan, Arizona, on August 8, 2023. Biden announced he is putting the brakes on uranium mining around the Grand Canyon and willl give an area of nearly one million acres national monument status.

Nearly 1 million acres of land near the Grand Canyon is now a national monument

By Laura Baisas

Tourists visit the Solfatara crater, part of the Campi Flegrei Volcano, the biggest caldera of Italy.

Up the coast from Pompeii, another city grows on top of an underground volcano

By Agostino Petroni/Undark

Sea turtle robot crawling across sand

This waddling robot could guide baby turtles to the sea

Two penguins and a seal on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Antarctica is in the climate change crosshairs

By Laura Baisas

Giant yellow dump truck depositing sand on San Francisco beach because of coastal erosion

Why your favorite beach might be eroding

A long and skinny silver trumpetfish uses a colorful parrotfish as camouflage.

Trumpetfish use other fish as camouflage

By Laura Baisas

Sprinklers on a golf course in Utah.

In water-strained Utah, can golf courses justify their giant footprint?

By Samuel Shaw/High Country News

Crab in ocean reaching with pincher.

As oceans become more acidic, creatures could struggle to smell

By Ethan Freedman/Hakai Magazine

Porites rus corals and scuba diver

Coral is reproducing in broad daylight

By Chloe Glad/Hakai Magazine

Swimmers walk out of the water after an evening swim on a beach in Avarua on Rarotonga, the largest Island in the Cook Islands.

The Cook Islands appear to embrace deep-sea mining—but at what risk?

By Rachel Reeves/Hakai Magazine

A pink river dolphin, or boto, displaying aerial behavior in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve.

Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them

By Laura Baisas

Dead elkhorn coral at Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys. The white areas are bleached coral, the brownish orange patches are "tissue slough", coral tissue that has died before it has a chance to bleach.

Mass coral reef bleaching in Florida as ocean temperatures hit 100 degrees

By Laura Baisas

A flower of a Nasa humboldtiana subspecies called humboldtiana that was rediscovered by a team of botanists and citizen scientists for the first time in 162 years. The flower has four white petals, leading down to a center of pink petals.

These unusual plants had disappeared—until citizen scientists helped hunt them down

By Laura Baisas

A kākāpō chick. The birds are are large flightless parrots from New Zealand who are masters of camouflage and known for a booming call.

A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence

By Laura Baisas

deep sea bubbles

The key to bringing deep sea samples up to the coast? An underwater freezer.

By Annie Roth / Hakai Magazine

American actor Richard Dreyfuss (left) (as marine biologist Hooper) and British author and actor Robert Shaw (as shark fisherman Quint) look off the stern of Quint's fishing boat the 'Orca' at the terrifying approach of the mechanical giant shark dubbed 'Bruce' in a scene from the film 'Jaws' directed by Steven Spielberg, 1975.

Why the creators of ‘Jaws’ regretted making sharks the monsters

By Laura Baisas

The sun sets over a large ice berg in Greenland, with a large chunk of fallen ice floating in the ocean. Greenland’s continental glacier covers about 80 percent of the 836,3000-square-mile land mass.

Greenland’s ice sheets aren’t as old—or as resilient—as scientists expected

By Laura Baisas

Person holds "SOS!! Pacific Ocean!" sign at Fukushima water release protest.

Japan’s plan to release treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant is actually pretty safe

Pair of bluefin tuna strung up on a fishing crane on the coast of Spain

Who caught the first bluefin tuna?

By Karen Pinchin

A green sea turtle swims in the ocean.

Hungry green sea turtles have eaten in the same seagrass meadows for about 3,000 years

By Laura Baisas

Ocean waves crashing.

How climate change is pushing oxygen out of the world’s oceans

By Carla Delgado

Group of Chinook salmon.

Beer’s pungent scent could help salmon find their way home

By Ben Goldfarb/Hakai Magazine

An image of the northern Gulf of Mexico created from remote-sensing reflectance and chlorophyll measurements taken from newly reprocessed VIIRS data. Green water is seen closer to the coast, while it gets darker and more blue further out.

Scientists say the ocean is changing color—and it’s probably our fault

By Laura Baisas

A banded sea snake swimming freely

Some sea snakes may not be colorblind after all

By Laura Baisas

A large group of shells on a beach. Organisms with hard, durable parts, like shells, are more likely to be preserved as fossils than organisms composed entirely of soft tissue.

The fossil record holds clues about modern-day marine ecology

By Laura Baisas

The giant Douglas firs in British Columbia forests are examples of so-called mother trees

Are ‘mother trees’ real?

Jars of animal and plant specimen.

Why preserving museum specimens is so vital for science

By Darren Incorvaia/Undark

hiking in the mountains

Human noises make animals in the woods nervous

By Christine Peterson/High Country News