Biodiversity

"“Barons,” published Tuesday by Austin Frerick, a native Iowan and Yale University food policy fellow, argues that a runaway process of monopoly has gutted rural America while bleeding the taste from American food."

"If you looked into the sky before dawn on Monday, you might have seen the worm moon. That’s the name some Native Americans give the March full moon because that’s when the soil warms and earthworms emerge. Others call it the crust moon, when snow melts and refreezes, or the sap moon, when maple trees are tapped."

"The Amazon is battling record early-year fires, fuelling fears of a worse climate crisis to come as blazes kill vegetation that is key to absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide. Fanned by drought, high winds and human felling, the forest is suffering unprecedented fires this early in the year, satellite images show, with the dry season still to reach critical parts of the Amazon."

"The famed coastal dunes that inspired the shifting sand landscape of the desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel “Dune” are also under siege — from climate change and human development."

"If you’ve ever enjoyed coffee, tomatoes, corn, bananas, mangoes, walnuts, chocolate, tequila or mezcal, you may just owe bats a thank-you."

"Alaska subsistence hunters struggling with caribou declines and lost hunting opportunities got a message at a gathering in Anchorage last week: They are not alone." "There are signs that climate change is depressing caribou numbers, and ongoing and proposed development could make recovery more difficult, experts say".

"Industrial vessels suspected of using a harmful fishing method known as bottom trawling spent more than 33,000 hours in British marine protected areas last year, a new analysis of satellite data shows."

"People have long drawn comparisons between ant societies and human ones – but in fact they are a reminder of how limited our influence on the world really is"

"AI tools are good for some things, but don’t trust your health to apps that make frequent mistakes".

"President Joe Biden’s administration has conditionally agreed to loan more than $2 billion to the company building a controversial lithium mine in Nevada with the largest known U.S. deposit of the metal critical to making batteries for electric vehicles key to his renewable energy agenda."