A detailed factual account of black bears based on peer-reviewed sources and wildlife agency data, covering their population (~900,000 in North America), distribution across 40 US states and Canadian provinces, sensory abilities, lifecycle including delayed implantation and hibernation, primarily vegetarian diet, and cognitive capabilities including touchscreen learning and tool use.
Johan Eliasch is a Swedish-British billionaire businessman who served as CEO of sporting goods company Head from 1995 to 2021 and has been president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation since 2021. He co-founded Cool Earth charity in 2006 and purchased 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest for conservation through the Rainforest Trust.
Wild buffalo are making a comeback on the Canadian plains, with the Banff Buffalo Paddock serving as a historical refuge since 1897. The article traces buffalo history from their decimation by settlers to their cultural significance for Indigenous peoples and their recent resurgence in the region.
The Trump administration issued a memo reinterpreting the Endangered Species Act to allow incidental killing of endangered animals as long as it wasn't the stated intent, effectively gutting protections that previously required environmental reviews and mitigation. Conservation advocates say the change follows an earlier rule modification removing habitat destruction from the ESA's definition of harm, and they argue it enables preventable deaths of vulnerable species.
Operation Migration was a nonprofit organization that used ultralight aircraft to teach migration routes to endangered whooping cranes. Founded in 1994 in Canada and 1999 in the USA, it helped establish a reintroduced eastern population of whooping cranes, which numbered 81 individuals by 2021, supplementing the naturally occurring wild population of 506 birds. The program ended in 2016 after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that human intervention had impaired the cranes' ability to develop essential parenting skills.
Fat Bear Week is an annual voting tournament celebrating the largest brown bears at Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska, as they prepare for winter hibernation. Participants vote in a single-elimination bracket from September 22-29 to crown the fattest bear champion, with voting open to the public via email verification. The competition highlights how bears accumulate fat reserves by feeding on salmon to survive their winter hibernation period.
Jane Marx, a landscape architect in Northern California wine country, lost her land to the 2017 Nuns Fire and later organized a grazing cooperative with neighbors to use sheep and goats to reduce wildfire risk by consuming overgrown vegetation, a practice guided by Sarah Keiser's consulting firm Wild Oat Hollow.
University of Florida researchers deployed 40 solar-powered robot bunnies in South Florida to attract invasive Burmese pythons for capture. The animatronic rabbits, equipped with motors, heaters, and motion-sensor cameras, mimic the movements and body temperature of marsh rabbits, a python favorite, while eliminating the logistical challenges of using live animals.
Researchers have identified Leopardus tilcayo, a new wild cat species from Bolivia's cloud forests, marking the first new wild cat discovery in 100 years. The small, spotted feline was identified through genetic testing after being brought to a wildlife sanctuary, and local Indigenous communities have traditionally called it the tilcayo.