Sunday, July 12, 2026

Conservation

EcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Jessica Espinosa

A Grizzly Situation: Saving Bears by Mitigating Conflict

Many people become fearful at the mention of “bear country.” But is the risk of being hurt by a bear, or even seeing a bear, on your trip really that high? The answer is no: many campers and hikers don’t even know they have passed close to a bear during their time outdoors because bears largely try to avoid humans. When bears do come close to people, it is usually due to conflicts over food and space. Humans often retaliate against bears in these situations, which can ultimately threaten the survival of bear populations. In an effort to save these bears, a team of scientists came up with a program to mitigate human-bear conflicts and create spaces where both humans and bears can coexist.

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Ecosystems
Sarah Shainker

Taking care of carrion

Vultures often serve as a symbol of death in popular movies and TV shows. However, they serve a vital role in keeping systems of life functioning healthily. Their lives are threatened by human actions, and a recent study gave some insight into how we can better conserve these important animals.

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Case StudiesEnvironmental Science
Sarah Shainker

Duck broods are more resilient than expected in the face of oil and natural gas extraction

The Bakken Formation, a unique geological feature in the midwestern US and Canada, is a mecca for oil reserves and duck habitat. Scientists aimed to better understand how increased oil production has impacted the establishment and survival of duck broods.

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EcosystemsEnvironmental Science
Kara Cromwell

Friend or foe? Invasive earthworms can benefit agriculture but harm forests

Earthworms are welcome guests in the garden, but it’s a different story in the forest. By consuming and removing leaf litter too fast they set in motion complex cascades of ecological changes, with long-term negative effects on soil fertility and biodiversity.

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Case StudiesEnvironmental ScienceScience through time
Alina Spera

Crowdsourcing Sharks: a citizen science success story

Conserving the environment and its organisms works most effectively when managers and scientists have a lot of environmental information. However, some of the world’s most vulnerable animals, like the sand tiger shark, are also the most secretive. Luckily for these scary looking predators, amateur scientists can be an agent of change.

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Environmental Science
Abigail Lewis

Can you figure out what species this is? Computers can

Protecting wild animals requires far more data than scientists could collect alone, so researchers often enlist the help of amateur “citizen scientists” to help identify animals in photos. However, with more and more large scale projects that need help from citizen scientists, it is taking an increasingly long time to process all of the photos from any individual study. Marco Willi from the University of Minnesota and his colleagues thought there might be a way to speed things up: by getting computers to identify most of the easy animals, and leaving humans to figure out the extra hard ones. 

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ClimateEnvironmental Science
Ashley Riane Booth

Native milkweed supports healthy monarch communities

“Monarch butterflies do really well on the exotic milkweed species that’s being widely sold and planted under current environmental conditions. But under warmer conditions, the exotic plant becomes too toxic and monarchs become less healthy.”

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Environmental Science
Sarah Shainker

Genetic clues to bee conservation

Bees pollinate our food crops, make honey, and provide livelihood to families around the world. As climate change and habitat loss reduce their populations, scientists search for genetic clues to learn how the bees are adapting and how we can better conserve them.

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Environmental Science
Abigail Bezrutczyk

Snowballs for Conservation: Taking DNA from Snow to Detect Rare Carnivores

One of the challenges of wildlife biology is the work needed to track rare animals in the field. In this new study a clever group of researchers use DNA analysis to attempt to solve this issue. Read on to find out more.

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Environmental Science
Riley Lovejoy

Gardeners for Biodiversity: How Surveys can Help Quantify Diversity in Urban Areas

Backyard gardens can boast surprising levels of biodiversity. Quantifying the diversity of many small gardens spread out across an urban area, however, can be difficult for scientists. In this study, researchers proposed a survey in which garden-owners were asked to give basic information about their gardens. From the responses, a statistical model was designed to determine the actual number of species present.

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