vox.com
Last year, the planet lost 9.2 million acres of its tropical forest, an area a bit larger than the entire state of Maryland, according to new data from environmental group World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland. That’s like losing about 10 soccer fields of forest per minute — for an entire year. Obviously, that sounds bad. It is bad. For decades on end, the world has watched its rainforests disappear and give way to giant farms and cattle ranches that feed the public’s de…
24 days ago
vox.com
Once a year, after dark, a bit of magic happens in the ocean. In tropical waters worldwide, large chunks of coral — those colorful rocklike structures in shallow, coastal waters, each a colony of living animals — start puffing out hundreds of little pearl-sized balls. Some are pink. Others are red, orange, or yellow. For a few minutes, the ocean is a snow globe, and then the balls float away. This phenomenon, known as spawning, is how many corals reproduce. Each ball is a bundle of eggs and sper…
about 1 month ago
vox.com
For those of us who live in a city or suburb and don’t farm our own food, it can be hard to understand how wild animals affect our lives. Natural resources like fresh drinking water and vegetables are just sort of ... there. Water comes out when you turn on the tap. Grocery store shelves are stocked with produce. But without ecosystems and the animals that occupy them, many of these resources would be far less accessible — and some, like chocolate, might not even exist at all. Spiders that we ma…
about 2 months ago
vox.com
The sex life of a conch is, for a snail, quite thrilling. In the spring and summer, the queen conch — a large, ornate species of marine snail — hunts for a mate in the warm, shallow waters of Florida and the Caribbean. Rather than slime along the ocean floor like many other mollusks do, conch (commonly pronounced “konk,” with a hard “k”) hop using a claw-shaped structure attached to their gooey innards. During mating season, conch will leap toward one another and pair up. Things escalate from th…
about 2 months ago
vox.com
If you were to dip your toes into the middle of the North Atlantic — say, somewhere between South Carolina and Spain — the water would feel frigid. You definitely wouldn’t want to swim. It’s winter. Yet that water would, in fact, be very warm, relatively speaking. Right now, the North Atlantic ocean is, on average, warmer than any other time on record, running about 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the average temperature over the last three decades. To understand just how unusual this is, take…
about 2 months ago
vox.com
Is oat milk good or bad for you? That’s the question a bunch of recent news headlines have asked. I really hate that question. Obviously, how the food we eat affects our health is very important. But most foods — including nondairy milks — are not universally good or bad for everyone. Whether or not oat milk is bad for your health depends on a lot of things: your current body condition, the context in which you’re consuming it, and how much of it you’re drinking, to name a few. “Simple ’good or…
2 months ago
vox.com
The story of the North Atlantic right whale, an icon of the East Coast, should be one of hope — a tale of recovery. Humanity’s strongest tools have been mobilized for their protection. For centuries, whalers hunted these graceful giants, which were once found throughout the North Atlantic, for their baleen and oily blubber. By the early 20th century, they were nearly extinct. But in 1935, alarmed by the shrinking number of right whales, international authorities banned commercial hunting of thes…
2 months ago
Search by beat, location, outlet & position to find the right journalists for your story.
Sign up for freevox.com
Global warming is famously bad for polar bears. The reason is simple: Sea ice provides a platform from which these hulking predators can hunt seals, their primary food source. And climate change is dramatically shrinking the number of weeks each year that the Arctic oceans are covered in ice. As a result, polar bears are spending more time on land, where calorie-dense food is far less accessible. What that means for the survival of these iconic creatures, however, has been something of a mystery…
2 months ago
vox.com
Camembert, I’m sorry to report, is in trouble. The soft cheese, which smells a bit like feet, is on the “verge of extinction,” according to the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Other cheeses, including brie and various blues, are under threat, too, the group has warned. This looming cheese crisis, this Camembert calamity, stems from a much bigger problem: a collapse in microbial diversity. Each hunk of Camembert or smear of brie is an ecosystem, an assortment of fungi and b…
3 months ago
vox.com
Maybe you’ve heard: Earth, our planet, is not doing great. Tropical forests are getting cut down. Parking lots are replacing bird-filled grasslands. Climate change is fueling forest-razing wildfires. On the whole, natural, plant-filled habitats, seem to be disappearing. Despite this destruction, scientists keep coming to an odd conclusion: The Earth is growing greener. Not green in the metaphorical “sustainable” sense, but in the literal color green. In the last four decades, the extent of green…
3 months ago
vox.com
Spotting a great white shark only 1,000 feet from the beach is usually quite scary. On rare occasion, these apex predators, which can reach 20 feet long and weigh two tons, bite people. But that wasn’t the case last summer, when a great white was seen near Santa Barbara, California — because the shark was a baby. At roughly five feet long, the marine animal was possibly only hours old. This observation is now causing a stir among marine biologists. That’s because, in a newly published paper, a r…
3 months ago
