Tag: environment
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Few bats for Quebec’s belfries. White-nose syndrome killing North American bats.
Photograph by: Nancy Heaslip, New York Department of Environmental Conservation MONTREAL – In March, Frédérick Lelièvre found himself crawling through a narrow passage into the final chamber of the Laflèche Cave in Val des Monts. Raising his eyes to the hibernating bats on the rock above him, his heart dropped. The tiny lime-size animals were…
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Q&A with Earth director Alastair Fothergill
Green Living Polar bears and prophecies from the director of Earth. Earth, the hotly anticipated new film from Disneynature—in theatres on Earth Day (April 22)—follows three families of mammals. It captures the spectacle of the animal kingdom on the Arctic sea ice, in the tropics and Kalahari Desert, and at the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. Green…
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Warmer caves may save bats from deadly fungus
Shivering bats need help to fight off white-nose syndrome Researchers are hoping that heated bat boxes can curtail the number of bats dying from white-nose syndrome — a condition that has decimated hibernating bats across the northeastern United States. As many as half a million bats have died from the poorly understood ailment since it…
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Arctic Expedition: Life on the Amundsen
When the CCGS Amundsen, a Canadian research ice breaker, left its home port of Quebec City in July 2007, it embarked upon a historic 15-month expedition that would have it travel across the Arctic and overwinter in the Beaufort Sea. The scientists on board the Amundsen might spend their days hunting for ice algae, fishing…
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Permafrost that lives up to its name
Ancient Canadian ice survived previous warm periods. A 740,000-year-old wedge of ice discovered in central Yukon Territory, Canada, is the oldest known ice in North America. It suggests that permafrost has survived climates warmer than today’s, according to a new study. “Previously, it was thought that the permafrost had completely disappeared from the interior about…