Invasive Species
To Catch a Snake: Largest Python Found in Everglades Signals a Threat
The state is seeking to improve detection of pythons in the wild, because they are skilled at camouflaging and settling in remote areas, Ms. Spencer said. “We need to try multiple methods, multiple ways to try to control these animals,” she said. Burmese pythons were introduced to the Everglades in the 1980s by the exotic […]
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Behold the Lionfish, as Transfixing as It Is Destructive
The silence underwater is overwhelming. Time passes quickly. Having spotted my target, I focus on it intensely, knowing that if I miss, and the animal gets away, it may learn from the encounter and be harder to hunt in the future. As I approach, armed with my spear, I watch as the fish spreads its […]
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New Zealand’s Biodiversity Crisis Prompts Extreme Measures
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The volunteer clambered down the cliffs, progressing along a series of knots on a thin rope as he made his perilous way about 100 feet down a steep rock face to the small box that he needed to refill with poison. It is one of thousands of such boxes, many in […]
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A Portrait of South Georgia: Abundance, Exploitation, Recovery
Sally Poncet first came to South Georgia in 1977. Back then, she said, the sub-Antarctic island was as gorgeous as it is today: A spine of mountains, some 100 miles long, defines the terrain; glaciers drape down from the peaks, with verdant slopes running up to meet them; glistening beaches wrap around the shoreline. But […]
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Why the Bradford Pear Tree Is Plaguing the South
CLEMSON, S.C. — In the distance, beside a brick house in a tidy subdivision, the trees rose above a wooden fence, showing off all that had made the Bradford pear so alluring: They were towering and robust and, in the early spring, had white flowers that turned their limbs into perfect clouds of cotton. But […]
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