conservation Archives - Page 2 of 8

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

Our task must be
to free ourselves
by widening our circle
of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature
and its beauty.

Albert Einstein

In honor of World Wildlife Day, we’d like to thank you for reading with us—and for planting with us.

Every month, with your kind support, Favorite World Press contributes to global forest restoration projects that provide critical habitats for endangered species like the Bengal tiger.

Through our partnership with Tree-Nation, we plant trees in tropical regions that host 80% of the world’s wondrous wildlife. You can learn more about how we grow with Tree-Nation to widen the circle of compassion here.

FWP Carbon Capture Report
From April 2022 through February 2023 the trees we’ve planted across 12 projects bring our carbon capture total to 2,778 tons of CO2. That’s equivalent to 6,896,212 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle, 337,954,898 smartphones charged, or 120,259 trash bags of waste recycled instead of landfilled.

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Lisa S. French March 3, 2023

Desert Elephants’ Quest for Clean Water

1.5-minute read

You can lead an elephant to water, but you can’t make it drink.

The desert-dwelling elephants of Namibia live in one of the harshest, driest landscapes on Earth. The average annual rainfall in the Namib Desert, where the mega-mammals make their home, is just 2mm, and permanent bodies of water are few and very far between.

Conservation researchers studying the survival strategies of the water-dependent herbivores were surprised to learn that despite having traveled hundreds of miles across inhospitable drylands, the intrepid trekkers weren’t overwhelmingly slurp-happy to quench their thirst at human-made drinking pools. Rather than rehydrate with readily available water, the elephants would use their feet and trunks to dig their own wells in adjacent dry riverbeds.

You Don’t Expect Us to Drink This, Do You?
So, what compelled the parched pachyderms to take a pass on the life-sustaining fluid from pre-dug pools? A quest for clean water. After comparing samples from the two water sources, researchers discovered that the multi-user boreholes were contaminated with bacteria that made drinking from them a non-starter for the discerning animals.

Although elephants have an extraordinarily sensitive olfactory system, it’s unclear whether the bacteria were detected through taste or scent, or both. One thing is certain, continuing to study how megafauna adapt to changes in water availability in a warming world will be critical to their survival.

ICYMI Nature News

Easy Ways to Stop Extinction
As scientists scramble to conserve our planet’s remaining biodiversity, FWP’s favorite cartoonist, First Dog on the Moon, recommends three easy steps to stop extinction. Most importantly, we have to want to. Count us in!

Want to Live Longer? Plant Trees
Good news for city dwellers. According to new research from the U.S. Forest Service, planting trees in urban neighborhoods can increase longevity. Another great reason to dig in and green your block!

New Designs for Robo-Planting
Speaking of planting, scientists are developing new solutions for planting trees and crops and fertilizing soil that mimic natural seed dispersal. Good to know. Until further notice, we’re still planting the old-fashioned way.

Meet the DIY Cockatoos
These brainy handy-birds know just what tools to use to solve a puzzle box. Ooh, can they unclog a sink?

Nat Geo’s Photos of the Year
Don’t forget to feast your eyes on National Geographic’s award-winning photographs of the natural world. Enjoy the splendor!

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Lisa S. French February 20, 2023

Trees: What are they Good for?

1.5-minute read

Before we get down to tree business, wherever you are in the world, we hope that your new year is off to a promising start. Beaming you a gargantuan dose of good fortune in the months ahead.

If you’re a regular reader, you know we often write about how forests help support life on Earth: combating climate change, purifying air and water, enhancing well-being, providing habitat for wildlife, and food, energy, and economic security for rural communities.

Every month we share updates on the carbon capture potential of the trees that we plant in reforestation projects around the world. Because what we plant is as important as where we plant, we’d like to introduce you to some of the leafy green, multi-purpose marvels that help keep the planet in good working order:

Nile Tulip
Markhamia lutea

Fast-growing
Provides shade for crops
Prevents soil erosion
Bark and leaves used for traditional medicine

Red Silk Cotton Tree
Bombax ceiba

Ornamental
Restores native woodland
Provides habitat for birds and bees
Edible seeds, flowers, and leaves

Horse Tamarind
Leucaena leucocephala

Drought tolerant
Restores native woodland
Provides human and animal nutrition
Edible seeds, flowers, and leaves

Teak
Tectona grandis

Fast-growing hardwood
Used for carpentry and construction
Provides human and animal nutrition
Used for traditional and modern medicine

Pombeiro
Tapirira guianensis

Big-canopied shade tree
Provides habitat for birds and bees
Provides human and animal nutrition
Used for traditional medicine

Croton
Croton megalocarpus

Fast-growing, 94% survival rate
Provides animal nutrition
Serves as fencing and windbreak
Used for traditional medicine

As you can see, in addition to cooling the planet, trees are good for all manner of important, life-sustaining things. Wherever the trees we plant put down roots, they don’t just stand around looking pretty; they get to work providing local and global benefits. With your kind support, we’re glad to continue to offer them job opportunities through the Tree-Nation platform in 2023.

2022 FWP Carbon Capture Report:

The 16 species of trees we planted across 12 projects from April through December of 2022 bring our total CO2 capture to 2,365 tons. That’s equivalent to 102,360 trash bags of waste recycled instead of landfilled, 2,616,392 pounds of coal burned, or 266,092 gallons of gasoline consumed.

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Lisa S. French January 15, 2023

Big Love for Big Life

1.5-minute read

Coexistence is about care, not control. It is about reciprocity, not retribution.

Peter S. Algona from The Accidental Ecosystem.

Over the course of the past year, we’ve written about creature life, the beauty, benefits, and science of nature, and some of the people and organizations working tirelessly to protect and preserve the living world that we love. In the spirit of the giving season, we dedicate this year-end blog to one of our favorite conservation non-profits in the hope that they will become one of yours.

Big Life Foundation: Conservation Supports People. People Support Conservation.
Protecting 1.6 million acres of wilderness in the Amboseli ecosystem in East Africa, Big Life has partnered with local communities for over a decade to safeguard nature, benefiting both people and wildlife.

Across alpine meadows, mountain forests, savannas, and wetlands, the holistic conservation organization secures habitat and migratory corridors for elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, hartebeests, and other native species by creating economic opportunities for native people to participate in protecting the ecosystem they depend on to survive.

And that collaborative approach to preserving nature has been incredibly effective. Thanks to Big Life’s community-based conservation and anti-poaching campaign, wildlife numbers in the Amboseli are on the rebound—giraffes have quadrupled, and there are ten times more lions and more elephants roaming the ecosystem in the past year than any time in the last half-century—much-needed hopeful news as global wildlife numbers continue to plummet.

Devastating Drought: A Call to Action
Following years of success implementing strategic interventions to sustain East Africa’s wildlife and wildlands, Big Life and their conservation partners are now facing a heart-wrenching climate-based crisis. The fourth year of the worst drought in decades across the Horn of Africa has devastated the region.

Prioritizing vulnerable communities and children, Big Life is providing school lunches across the Amboseli ecosystem and environmental work for women to help feed their families. Until the rains return, they are also pumping water into remote areas for migrating wildlife and providing hay and food pellets to prevent starvation. The effects of this environmental crisis will likely last for months. Right now, the conservation organization is in critical need of assistance. If you would like to pitch in to help save Africa’s iconic animal species and provide relief for drought-impacted communities, please visit BigLife.org to learn more about their life-sustaining work—for the love of the living world.

ICYMI Nature News

A Big Plan for the Entire Planet
This week’s really big news is that international negotiations are underway in Montreal to develop a roadmap to protect biodiversity and keep our home planet’s ecosystems chugging along, providing life essentials and soul-soothing extras. What’s at stake? Oceans, rivers, lakes, wetlands, forests, prairies, woodlands, the climate, all creatures great and small—life on Earth. Here’s an explainer. And here are the biodiversity numbers. And here is a visual tour of nature in crisis.

Glow-in-the-Dark Crustaceans
Described as “the most spectacular natural wonder most people will never see”, tiny Caribbean male crustaceans light up their underwater world. Actually, you lucky people can see it here.

Honeybee Half-Life
According to scientists at the University of Maryland, the life span of honeybees is 50% shorter than it was 50 years ago. Fifty percent! We need to bee better.

City Cougar Quadruplets
The world’s largest wildlife crossing is about to get more big cat traffic. A cougar in the Santa Monica mountains near Los Angeles has delivered four healthy cubs, and the mother and adorable babies are doing fine. You can have a peek at the new arrivals here.

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Lisa S. French December 12, 2022

Planet-Protecting Pachyderms

2-minute read

Could protecting Earth’s largest mammals help tackle the two most critical items on our planetary to-do list: reducing the impacts of both climate change and biodiversity loss? According to new research from Oxford University, by virtue of their size, the most mega of megafauna may have a role to play in maintaining the healthy functioning of ecosystems negatively impacted by global heating.

One of the greatest hazards we face in a warming world is more frequent and intense wildfires. Between 2002 and 2016, 10.45 million acres a year were destroyed by fire globally—67% of the loss was in Africa. As the planet becomes hotter, drier, and more fire-prone, scientists are examining how protecting and increasing populations of endangered species of megafauna like elephants might help lower the temperature and limit the damage.

Beloved for their oversized ears, twisty trunks, keen intelligence, and exceptional empathy, elephants are also prolific stompers, chompers, and seed dispersers; those daily activities can reduce both CO2 in the atmosphere and the threat of wildfires. How so? It’s complicated, but the short story is that by consuming potentially flammable vegetation (and lots of it, up to 375 pounds a day), creating natural fire breaks by trampling soil, and dispersing seeds of trees with high capacity to store CO2, elephants, and other large herbivores, could limit the spread of fires and reduce the conditions that create them.

Elephants aren’t alone in their ability to influence the health of wild places. Conservation projects aimed at protecting ecosystem-engineering wildlife like whales, bison, sea otters, and wolves can help increase the resilience of natural environments under intense pressure from global heating. By continuing to examine the interdependence of wildlife and Earth systems and by creating conditions that allow nature to heal and flourish, amazing things can happen—like this.

ICYMI Nature News

Mighty Forest Mice
Even mini mammals can have a mega impact on the health of ecosystems. According to The New York Times, mice scurrying around forest floors are also important seed dispersers that help ensure the survival of trees exposed to environmental stressors.

Remember the Manatees
Pollution and habitat loss continue to take their toll on the Florida megafauna–over 2,000 manatees have perished in the last two years. It’s well past time to re-classify the charismatic creatures as endangered before they disappear.

NYC’s New Old Tree
In the spring of 2023, visitors to NYC’s High Line Park will be seeing red. A new rosy-hued sculpture installation, Old Tree, by Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz, will explore the indivisible connection between human and plant life. Have a look at the preview and swing by in the spring!

Christmas Bird Count
Okay, citizen scientists, if you need a good reason to tear yourself away from the fireplace and holiday cookie pile, Audubon’s 123rd annual Christmas Bird Count runs from December 14th through January 5th. Grab your binoculars and get those cookies to go. You can sign up here.

FWP Carbon Capture Report
We believe trees make a big difference in the health and well-being of people, wildlife, and the planet, and that’s why we keep planting them with the help of our partners at Tree-Nation. The trees that we’ve planted from April through November bring our carbon capture to 2,200 tons of CO2. That is equivalent to 2,235,456 pounds of coal burned, 247,604 gallons of gasoline consumed, and 267,669,777 smartphones charged. Oh, yeah, treeing is believing!

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Lisa S. French December 2, 2022

A Big Win for a Little Bird

2-minute read

Wren you’ve got it, you’ve got it!

The pīwauwau rock wren, the little songbird with the really big feet, has hopped and bopped past its competitors to be crowned 2022 New Zealand Bird of the Year. And what makes the diminutive mountain dweller a winner? For starters, the feathered rock climber is New Zealand’s only true alpine bird, spending its entire life flitting around the unforgiving, rugged terrain of the island country’s mountain regions. Despite weighing less than a double-A battery and lacking an insulating layer of down, the rock wren manages to endure months of bitter cold temperatures that can drop below -10℃ at elevations as high as 3,000 meters.

You might think that an ancient bird species robust enough to survive 62 million years in such a harsh environment could handle just about anything nature throws its way, but the rock wren is in serious trouble. Unfortunately, human-introduced predators have pushed the intrepid avian mountaineers to the brink of extinction.

Even though our Bird of the Year pick, the rockhopper penguin, failed to capture the crown, we’re happy to congratulate this little endangered underbird on its much-deserved big win. With 49% of bird species globally in decline, drawing attention to the plight of rare and at-risk fliers like the New Zealand rock wren can promote conservation strategies that ensure they stick around to prettify the planet for another few million years.

You can find out more about the rock wren and other amazing New Zealand bird species from Forest & Bird. And if you’d like to offer your support to all of the winged wonders of our world, Birdlife International has lots of ways you can lend a hand. Faced with the triple threats of climate change, habitat loss, and invasive species, our beloved birds might just survive with a little help and TLC from their fwrens.

ICYMI Nature News

Prescription Bird Benefits
We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again, being around birds is good for you. In case you need another great reason to spend time in nature with the feathered songsters, researchers at King’s College have concluded that seeing and hearing birds improves overall mental well-being. So, if you’ve got a stubborn case of the blues, you may benefit from a daily dose of prescribed birdsong.

Bees Just Want to Have Fun
Apparently, all work and no play makes for very dull pollinators. We knew the brainy, little insects were hard workers, but according to scientists at Queen Mary University, bees are also fun seekers that like to play with toys given the opportunity. Note to self: add teeny-tiny toy chest to garden.

Mapping Pachyderm Facial Feels
Have you ever wondered how elephants maintain such effortless control of their trunks? According to Science Advances, it’s because they have tens of thousands of nerve cells in the grape-sized brain region that controls their facial muscles—63,000 cells for African elephants and 54,000 for Asians. We humans, by comparison, have only 8-9000 nerve cells in our facial control center. Now you know why you can’t pull out tree trunks with your nose.

Nose-Picking Primates
It’s long been accepted that Mother Nature provides each unique species on the planet with the essential tools and abilities needed to survive. In the case of the Madagascar aye-aye, it seems the primate needs to pick its nose, so is equipped with an 8 cm extra-long middle finger to do the job. Researchers believe that the nose-picking habit (hobby?), also common in other primates, is likely a form of self-cleaning. Tissue, little fellow?

FWP Carbon Capture Report
We’ve got another month of tree planting and carbon capture updates to report. But before we get to the number crunching, we’d like to provide a bit of info about why we plant where we plant.

Almost every region on Earth can get a boost from tree planting, but picking spots that provide the optimal social, biodiversity, and environmental benefits is critical to our mission. Through our partnership with Tree-Nation, we plant the majority of our trees in the tropical zone, where they receive the most sunlight to expedite growth and CO2 capture.

Tropical regions also host about 85% of all terrestrial species. Planting trees in the tropics helps combat deforestation and habitat loss that threaten many species with extinction. The Tree-Nation platform also enables us to plant drought-resistant crop trees that support communities most at risk from famine and malnutrition. Our goal is to plant the right trees in the right places for the greatest all-around benefit.

From April through October, the trees we’ve planted across 11 projects bring our carbon capture total to 2020 tons of CO2. That’s equivalent to 2,235,456 pounds of coal burned, 227,350 gallons of gasoline consumed, or 5,015,197 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle.

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Lisa S. French November 1, 2022

Trick or Trees

1.5-minute read

“Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume
of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door—
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered,
“tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

Edgar Allen Poe—The Raven

Of all the things that go bump in the night, what is the most hair-raising horror you can imagine tapping at your door this Halloween? A horde of zombies? A pack of werewolves? A coven of vampires? A gaggle of hobgoblins? Or—gulp—all of the above.

There’s no doubt that a spooky-season visit from creatures of the underworld would be pretty darn scary (especially those zombies). Do you know what’s even scarier? The year-round global impacts of climate change. And one of the greatest contributors to climate change is deforestation. Approximately 18% of global heating is caused by the loss of trees. That exceeds the CO2 emissions created by the entire transport sector.

We have two solutions to cool a rapidly warming planet—reduce emissions, or capture the CO2 already released into the atmosphere. But lowering emissions is not happening fast enough. In fact, atmospheric CO2 reached record-high levels in 2021. While other carbon capture systems are being developed, right now reforestation is by far the most efficient and affordable solution. It is considered essential to keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

In addition to helping to combat climate change, planting trees addresses other major planetary perils, including pollution, species extinction, desertification, floods, poverty, and malnutrition. Trees remove toxins from our air, purify our rivers and water sources, serve as habitats for millions of species, bring revenue to local populations, and help us get food, fodder, and medicine.

Trees offer so many benefits for people and the environment that planting them is a no-brainer. Sorry, zombies. That’s why we’ve partnered with Tree-Nation to plant one tree for every print or e-book that we sell. Tree-Nation is committed to planting 1 trillion trees by 2050, and we’re glad to have the opportunity to pitch in and help with the transition to a sustainable future.

You can learn more about forests and the benefits of planting trees right here.

As always, thank you for reading with us, thank you for planting with us.

Happy Halloween!

FWP – No tricks—just trees.

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Lisa S. French October 27, 2022

Making Room for Urban Wildlife

2-minute read

If you took the city… and turned it upside down and shook it, you would be amazed at the animals that would fall out.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

What kinds of creatures would fall out if you turned your city upside down? Here in NYC, we’d shake out 1.1 million domestic animals of the woofing, meowing variety, and a surprising assortment of wild ones, including coyotes, deer, raccoons, possums, skunks, hawks, and the occasional snowy owl. As habitat loss and climate change continue to take their toll on natural ecosystems, wild animals looking for a home away from home can end up in unexpected places, like a green patch of park in the middle of a 23-square-mile island inhabited by 1.63 million people.

By 2050, it’s estimated that 7 billion people will live in urban areas. Whether it’s coyotes in Manhattan, sea lions in San Francisco, or cougars in Los Angeles, cities will be supporting more diverse animal species in response to the impacts of ongoing environmental change. As wildlife and urban dwellers try to adjust to sharing the same habitat, cities that plan for peaceful co-existence will be critical to the survival of some of our increasingly endangered animals.

Because coyotes are going to coyote, and cougars are going to cougar, managing the ecological challenges of making room for urban wildlife takes innovative thinking so that animals can do what they normally do without stressing out their human neighbors.

So, what would a wildlife-friendly city look like? It could look like Los Angeles, the second most populated city in the U.S., which is in the final stages of planning and fundraising for the world’s largest urban wildlife crossing, a 210-foot span over ten lanes of the 101 Freeway, which will create a vital connection for a population of at-risk cougars and other native wildlife.

The average home range of a cougar is 240 square miles, but the fragmentation of habitat by roads and ongoing development is a threat to their survival. By reconnecting the Santa Monica Mountain ecosystem over the 101, the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing will give big cats like P-22, aka the Brad Pitt of cougars, the ability to freely move between regions, helping to save the iconic animals from isolation and extinction.

The wildlife crossing will also provide other California creatures—bobcats, grey foxes, coyotes, and mule deer—with a safe passage between patches of critter-friendly habitat. And human inhabitants of the sprawling city will get a nature boost too. The conservation project’s green space will include a multi-use trail and recreation areas for hikers, bikers, and equestrians—all-around good news for nature-loving Angelenos.

Studying how wild animals live, move, and adapt when faced with the accelerating pressures of habitat loss and climate change is helping conservationists, city planners, and concerned citizens to create resilient urban ecosystems that will make cities healthier and more livable for humans and wildlife on a rapidly changing planet.

You can read about the big cats of the Santa Monica Mountains here and learn more about how a short walk over a ten-lane freeway could be vital to helping these endangered cougars to keep on cougaring from the good people at Save LA Cougars Campaign.

ICYMI Nature News

A Purr-fect Ending
Speaking of big cats, we think you might need to take a look at this unbelievably adorable video of chirping cheetahs at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Did your heart swell to ten times its normal size at the end? Yeah, we thought so.

The Beary Chunky Chompion
Did you predict the winner of Fat Bear Week? If you bet on 747, aka Bear Force One, congratulations on your astute sense of future bear fatness. If you’d like to learn why hibernating bears are able to pack on the pounds and stay healthy, The Washington Post has some interesting insights for you here.

A Brand New Whale
The good news: scientists named a new species of baleen whale this week. The bad news: the 60,000-pound marine mammal, dubbed Rice’s whale, is on the verge of extinction. Geez, give us a chance to get to know the finned fellows…

A Pest-Beating Flowering Plant
Scientists have discovered a Costa Rican plant that turns crop-destroying pests into pollinators. Crafty!

Audubon Migratory Bird Explorer
Have you checked out Audubon’s guide to bird migration yet? You can track the annual journeys of over 450 bird species and learn about the challenges they face to surviving along the way with this cool bird tracking tool. Also, we just wanted to mention the fifth and final beautiful installment of the Birdsong Project is now available—from Audubon to your ears.

Underbirds Are Go
Voting for Forest & Bird’s New Zealand Bird of the Year is now open. Exciting! Which finely feathered candidate will earn your nod of approval? We’re going with the Rockhopper penguin again this year. With those outstanding head tufts, it has to win eventually. Choose your five favorites here.

And that’s all for now. Have a super week!

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Lisa S. French October 17, 2022

Hudson Marine Canyon – You Won’t Believe What’s Down There

2-minute read

Octopuses, dolphins, and whales. Oh, my!

It’s fair to say that wall-to-wall, bumper-to-bumper modern-day Manhattan would never be mistaken for a wild kingdom. Although the city island that is notoriously short on elbow room once had enough roaming room to accommodate the same number of animal species that occupy the 3,741 square miles of Yellowstone National Park, Gothamites now think of nature with a capital “N” as just about anywhere but here.

While we don’t have the spare acreage to recreate a wilderness area on Wall Street or a savanna in Central Park, there’s still enough space offshore for some of the planet’s most charismatic creatures. Just 100 miles southeast of the Statue of Liberty, extending out 350 miles, is one of the largest deep-sea canyons in the world.

Rivaling the scale of the Grand Canyon, everyone’s favorite massive gorge, and 10,500 feet below sea level at its deepest point, the Hudson Canyon is home to hundreds of species of magnificent marine animals—octopuses, squid, sharks, corals, endangered sea turtles, whales, and dolphins to name a precious few. An ecological hotspot a boat ride away from the most densely populated urban area in the United States—who knew?

Now, thanks to the efforts of the good people at the Wildlife Conservation Society and planet-appreciating citizens across the country, the 10,000-year-old canyon is in the final stages of NOAA designation as a National Marine Sanctuary. At a time when both humans and wildlife struggle to adapt to rapid environmental change, the sanctuary designation will create another much needed permanent haven for marine animals that also supports the livelihoods of local communities.

There are currently 15 National Marine Sanctuaries in the NOAA network dedicated to conserving unique and valuable marine ecosystems as well as economic, cultural, and historical resources. You can read all about them and find out how to help here.

ICYMI Nature News

Your Ant Allotment
Scientists have finished tallying the number of ants on Earth—ant, ant—ant, ant, ant—and the estimated number is… 20 quadrillion. That’s 2.5 million ants for every person on the planet. Whoa, we are seriously outnumbered. Sleep with one eye open.

Sneezing Sponges
Did you know that sea sponges can sneeze? Did you even know that sea sponges have the equivalent of a nose—or should we say noses? Well, they can, and they do. Behold a sneezing sponge. Gesundheit!

Spiders Go Electric
Researchers have finally discovered the secret to long-distance spider travel. It seems that our multi-legged friends can harness the energy of Earth’s electric field to get where they need to go without the benefit of wings or charging stations.

Avian Art, Awe, and Action
The Audubon has invited artists to reimagine the artwork of John James Audubon in their own unique style. You can awe-scroll the aviary here.

Walk the Walk for Wildlife
Would you like to make a commitment to conservation that’s also good for your health? Throughout October, you can contribute to the protection of the world’s amazing animals and wild places by joining the World Wildlife Fund Species Step Challenge. Take on either 5,000 or 10,000 steps a day to help secure a future for people, wildlife, and the planet. Sign up to walk the walk with WWF here.

Road Trip Reminder
It’s officially autumn—the time of year when many of our national parks reach peak splendor. If you’re tempted to hit the highway for a dose of leaf peeping, it just so happens that Saturday, September 24, every park in the U.S. is free. Check this list for a beauty spot near you and go, go, go!

Happy trails!

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Lisa S. French September 22, 2022

City Birds Pump Up the Volume

2-minute read

Can you hear me now?

The lilting birdsong that adds beauty to the soundscape of our planet plays an essential role in avian social interaction, mate attraction, and territory protection. But for feathered songsters nesting in urban areas, maintaining bird-to-bird communications above the din of a bustling city is no small tweet. Urban dwellers of all kinds are regularly exposed to the stress of noise levels above 85 decibels (equivalent to a perpetually running food blender) compared to the 30-40 decibels of a wilderness area. So how do city birds make themselves heard over the honking? They’ve learned to pump up the volume.

According to researchers at Ohio State and the University of California at Davis, birds adapting to survive in cities may adjust the volume, pitch, or timing of their chirps, whistles, and warbles to break through the background noise. Sparrows, northern cardinals, American robins, and red-winged blackbirds are some of the species that can modify their songs to improve vocal transmission.

Because belting out birdsong takes more energy, larger birds have a greater capacity to sing over street racket. Some of the clever critters have also adjusted the timing of their dawn chorus so that it starts ahead of rush hour. Not only do early birds catch the worm, but they also know to trill before traffic starts.

With bird populations down by 2.9 billion across North America since 1970, understanding how and if our avian friends can adapt to environmental change and continued habitat loss is critical to their conservation. Perhaps the meaning of those early morning urban tweet storms roughly translated is “C’mon, people, work with us. We’re trying to sing out here!” If you’d like to find out how to keep the birdsong going, the Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have lots of innovative ways to help.

ICYMI Nature News

Even More Bird Beauty
The winning photos of the Bird Photographers of the Year for 2022 have been announced, and they are stunning. Have a look! And if you’ve been following along with the Audubon Birdsong Project, Volume IV is now available for your listening pleasure.

Endangered Migration
Like other winged species, monarch butterflies are struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing world. The WWF has released a magical new short film on the threats to monarch migration. You can watch here.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Land shark.
According to researchers at the University of Florida, a small species of carpet shark found in the South Pacific is adapting to warming seas by learning to fin-walk on land. Time to break out the shin guards.

Shake, Shake, Rattle, and Glow
Meet the Elvis worms. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have discovered four new species of deep-sea worms whose shimmery scales rival the King’s sequined jumpsuits. Iridescent worms? We’re all shook up!

FWP Carbon Capture Report
As scientists continue to discover more ways that trees and forests add to our happiness, we’re glad to have the opportunity to contribute to those positive vibes thanks to our planting pals at Tree-Nation. Since April 2022, the trees we’ve planted across eleven projects bring our carbon capture to 1,562 tons of CO2. That’s equivalent to 3,878,347 miles driven by a gasoline-powered passenger vehicle, 190,061,769 smartphones charged, or 1,728,720 pounds of coal burned.

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Lisa S. French September 10, 2022