The 2007 Witch Fire was a devastating fire for people and wildlife, especially for the troubled cactus wren which has seen its habitat slowly squeezed down and out for decades now. It’s bad enough the songbird was struggling for survival pre-fire, but with the conflagration destroying much of the bird’s shrunken habitat, it’s a down-right […]
SoCal’s big wild cats are the subject of a state investigation that’s trying to discover just what the heck is going on at 270,000 acre Tejon Ranch. The California Department of Fish and Game is looking into claims by a former employee who alleges that he was fired because he complained about the company engaged […]
Green technology, that clean, eco-easy and eco-friendly savior to America’s dependency on fossil fuels, has just met its foe: the evasive and extremely endangered desert tortoise. In a script that smacks of complicated irony that only short story author O. Henry could compose, the events unfolding in the eastern Mojave Desert are creating a modern day […]
We want more tweets. Please. The Department of the Interior and the USDA issued its annual State of the Birds 2011 report and humanity has some ‘splaining to do. The document assesses birds on public lands and waters where more than 300 species live. Sure, the government has made improvements on public lands – and […]
If late-night thunks and clunks outside make you wonder if truly your backyard is home to a mysterious family of wild animals that aren’t your children, then consider making a plea to National Geographic to be on their new television series. “Wild” is a new NatGeo show where teams of wildlife investigators – armed with […]
There’s a bunch of “firsts” for bald eagles taking place on the Channel Islands these days. Number one: an eagle pair has nested on Anacapa Island, located 13 miles from the coastline off Ventura. This hasn’t happened in 60 years. Then, there a set of triplets were born to a proud eagle parents on Catalina […]
After being named “Bird of the Year” by the Audubon Society, the Barn Owl (Tyto alba) continues its high flight in the spotlight with a view from the nest, courtesy of Audubon Starr Ranch webcam in Orange County. That’s right. Real time nature at your fingertips!
They may be great and white, but the numbers of the great white shark who dwell off the central California coast are far fewer than biologists had thought. Research led by UC Davis and Stanford University put the number at about 219. The study, published this week in the journal Biology Letters, is the first […]
At one point, a mere 25 years ago, you could have easily written off the California condor: the population was extinct in the wild and only 27 birds were living in captivity at the San Diego Zoo. Pretty much a done bye-bye deal for North America’s largest flying bird, right?
As their California condor population continues to grow, the folks at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park are giving their California Condor Recovery Program a maternal makeover – and we think we hear peeps of joy from new baby birds born in captivity.
Naturalists would have had a couple of A+ field days down in Orange County this past weekend because folks aboard a Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching vessel got a taste of nature at her most unusual – two, possibly rare albino dolphins and an estimated 2,200 pound sunfish (better known as a mola mola).
One of Southern California’s rarest butterflies, the Hermes copper, was denied endangered status on April 14 and was placed on the growing list of “candidate” species. “Sprawl and huge wildfires threaten to wipe out this beautiful butterfly,” said Ileene Anderson, a biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization that has been seeking protection […]