Beauty, schmeauty….this year voters put cast their ballots for one of the world’s rarest, most imperiled, and we think majestic birds to fly the skies of SoCal. The California condor has been named the 2011 Audubon California Bird of the Year in an annual online poll that invites readers and nature-lovers to choose a feathered [...]
We all know that the holiday season often brings us together with hard-to-get-along guests – but a Southern California family recently discovered a very unwelcomed visitor creeping around the parameters of their Rancho Bernardo home. No it wasn’t a crazed alcoholic uncle scoping out the eggnog bowl, it was a poisonous Gila monster. Rare, [...]
Fossil lovers who need their daily fix of All Things Pleistocene will shout a collective cry of joy on December 12, 2011 when the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits launches its new fangled, fancied-up website, www.tarpits.org. Promising to have more insight into the gooey world of Mid Whilsire Los Angeles (albeit 40,000 years [...]
Transitions are tough. We know how hard it is to pack up belongings and move. Broken dishes, unruly movers, sorting through the junk, adjusting to a new environment. But imagine how it is for wildlife that – with no intention of moving in the first place – are uprooted and presented with a new home. [...]
The problem with estimations is that, well, they are just guesses. Educated predications, sure, but still guesses. Pining for some hard empirical data, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently launched the first ever black oystercatcher survey for California. Apparently, scientists have a handle on the number of these birds with the hypnotic yellow [...]
File this under: “How One Little Fish Can Raise Such a Big Ruckus.” The Santa Ana sucker has for centuries minded its own business, eating algae, surviving floods and procreating in some of Southern California’s pristine streams. Course, after humans infiltrated the landscape and removed most of the habitat for the olive-colored big-lipped beauty, Santa [...]
There’s a little more traffic in Humpback Whale Land, according to scientists who recently published a report in the journal Marine Mammal Science. Back in 2008, scientists estimated about less than 20,000 humpback whales in the North Pacific; now, a new report indicates that the leviathan population to be more than 21,000 – or [...]
Breaking with the Los Angeles County contract that allows the trapping and killing of coyotes, the City of Calabasas recently permanently banned coyote trapping and killing, opting instead for a plan for coexistence. Representatives from Project Coyote and the Animal Welfare Institute are expected to work with city officials to hammer out the details for a [...]
It’s bad enough that urban mountain lions have freeways dissecting their territory, poisoned varmints for prey and an ever-shrinking space to roam – now this: poaching by humans. The small population of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains got a little smaller last month with the discovery of a badly mutilated lion in [...]
An important reminder: wildlife doesn’t need your non-wild food.
Dozens of dead and dying ducks have been discovered at ponds and lakes around Lake Forest, apparently the victims of botulism poisoning which causes infected birds to lose muscle control and often drown.