Abandoned industrial sites litter the world, and many are contaminated with pollutants that make it difficult to redevelop the land. Yet some species of trees can tolerate polluted soil and thrive.…

Rusty blackbird populations have declined by about 95 percent in the last 50 years, making their decline the fastest of any songbird in all of North America. They breed in stunted conifers deep in the…

Beavers have long been admired for their dam-building skills, which enable them to create ponds and slow the movement of water. Recently, a team of University of Rhode Island scientists has discovered…

When Garland Mill began operations in 1856 – five years before the start of the Civil War – there were more than 600 water-powered sawmills in New Hampshire. One hundred-sixty years later,…

Troubled Waters: Preserving a World-Class Trout Fishery in Maine, Weed Wars: A Battle Against Poison Parsnip, Bat Rehab, Thirty-Eight: Salvaging Lumber After the Storm, and much more

Did you ever use your hands to scoop the air toward your nose when someone takes a pie out of the oven? Snakes are doing the same thing when they flick their forked tongues. “They are…

Found in a vernal pool in late April. What is it?

With respect to Donald Trump (and without making a partisan political statement), I think it’s fair to say that in a lot of ways America is greater than it’s ever been. A perfect example…

Your April photos revealed a landscape full of new life. Loons nested, wildflowers bloomed, and a baby porcupine did its best to ignore the presence of an animal tracking group. Vernal pools were full…

Everyone loves a good comeback story – like Rocky Balboa coming out of retirement and willing his way to victory through sheer grit and determination. Or like Super Bowl champion Kurt Warner,…

We noticed the first robin in our yard this year in early March. Normally these famous spring harbingers, who move in comically stilted hops across our front lawn, don’t show up until at least…

Doolittle Creek is a small stream that meanders through the Fairfield Valley east of Candor, New York. The Doolittle Creek beavers, henceforth known as the beavers, had built a nice dam across the…

If we treated municipal waste like the forest products industry treats wood waste, we could probably eliminate landfills – everything would be sold, turned into energy, or reused. Ok, maybe…

It’s just a tiny black dot moving very, very slowly. But if you’re interested in astronomy, this is an exciting dot. It is Mercury, the smallest planet in our solar system, passing between…

Great early spring bird food…what are they?

If you’re new to forest management, it might be tempting to think that forestry is a pretty simple affair. There’s a book out there that tells you what a good stocking level is. You can…

I recently visited my family’s riverside farm in Virginia, where we’re a few years ahead of the Northeast in terms of eagle and osprey recovery from DDT (the “Silent Spring”…

"Boy, he's really red! I don't think I've ever seen them that red before," my wife said admiringly of a male purple finch crunching sunflower seeds at the feeder. He was a nice burgundy.…

It was the woods that brought me to Vermont. More precisely, it was the footpath through its woods – the Long Trail. Its moniker “A Footpath in the Wilderness” was part of the…

Some years sugaring season goes by the book, which is to stay things starts cold, and over the course of four to six weeks spring arrives gradually and consistently. In such a scenario, the syrup…