For five years, Cool Green Science has been connecting you to nature, whether it’s helping you understand the birds in your backyard or reporting on the biggest conservation science challenges around the globe.
Here’s a look back at ten of our most popular posts of 2017.
Thank you, as always, for reading, commenting and sharing our conservation science blog. We look forward to continuing our nature blog journey with you in the new year.
-
Owls in the Outhouse: Opening the Bathroom Door on a Foul Bird Issue
By Kris Millgate
Long-eared Owl rescued from vault toilet. Photo courtesy Bureau of Land Management It’s not a potty joke: owls are falling into outhouses in public lands. Fortunately, there’s a solution. This is undoubtedly the grossest conservation story we’ve ever run. (And warning: the photos are not for queasy stomachs).
-
Elk in the Neighborhood: On Conservation and Lost Hope
By Matt Miller
A herd of elk meander between fall aspen. Image. Photo © Scott Copeland An improbable evening encounter with an elk herd is only possible because conservationists kept fighting when all hope was lost.
-
Better Restoration Through ‘Shrooms?
By Cara Byington
Getting ready to mix the 'shroom juice © The Nature Conservancy (Cara Byington) Conservationists trying to restore eastern spruce struggled to establish new trees. Then they found the special sauce: ‘shroom juice.
-
Tongue Orchids & Corpseflowers: 7 Insanely Weird Plant Species
By Justine E. Hausheer
Photo © Jeremiah Harris / Wikimedia Commons Cool Green Science has always brought you the weird side of nature. Here’s a celebration of some truly bizarre, even unsettling, flora. A plant that captures shrew poo? Read on.
-
Threatened Bats Find a Slice of Paradise in New Jersey
By Lisa Feldkamp
Northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) hibernating in a cave formation. Photo © Ann Froschauer/USFWS on Flickr through a Creative Commons license “Netting a bat in an open area is like finding a needle in a haystack,” says one bat researcher. And that challenge is compounded when it’s a bat species that’s been decimated by White-Nose Syndrome.
-
Recovery: Benefits of Salmon Failure
By Ted Williams
American shad in fishlift in Holyoke Dam on Connecticut River in Holyoke, MA. Courtesy of Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection An ambitious effort to recover Atlantic salmon failed. But what a failure! A look at how an unsuccessful conservation effort restored huge runs of other native fish.
-
Tracing the Wild Origins of the Domestic Turkey
By Joe Smith
Photo © Jim / Flickr Think you know everything about the Thanksgiving bird? How about its origins? Ornithologist Joe Smith tracks down the mysterious (and perhaps gone in the wild) Aztec turkey.
-
The Quest to Restore American Elms: Nearing the Finish Line
By Suki Casanave
The Wallace Elm in Colebrook, NH, harvested in 2017. This elm is the only survivor from a row of elms that lined the street in front the Wallace Farm, owned and operated by the Wallace family since 1785. Princeton elm in foreground. Photo © Gus Goodwin / The Nature Conservancy The quest to restore the American elm has been underway for more than half a century. Today, with help success is closer than ever—good news for our floodplain forests, as well as our urban communities.
-
The Mountain Lion in the Window
By Cara Byington
We love backyard wildlife, and regularly feature posts helping you understand nature near you. But on The Nature Conservancy’s Matador Ranch, backyard wildlife is even more exciting – especially when a large predator appears in your window well.
-
Natalie holding point as the herd disperses over Bear Basin. Photo © Melanie Elzinga I was here to see a conservation success on public ranchlands. The one problem: my horse was trying to kill me.
Is there a way to submit a full-blown blog post or article to either of TNC’s blogs?
Feel free to email me at m_miller @ tnc.org