Environmental Almanac

How can we protect sea turtles, birds, night-flying pollinators and other wildlife? By updating our lighting practices.

If you’re looking for energy and inspiration this month—and who’s not? —let me call your attention to the state of the environmental community in central Illinois, and some of the ways it has flourished over the past year.

Much of the pleasure of Christmas Bird Counts is discovering surprises. Tune in to learn what the author and his team found this year in Champaign County.

Who knows how long a compass plant incorporated into campus landscaping will live? As it turns out, that question has been answered.

How far do urban residents have to go to tune into the natural world? Not far at all, especially where streams flow.

The statewide moose population in New Hampshire peaked at about 7,400 animals in the 1990s, but even then, moose numbers in the north country never reached levels biologists had anticipated the habitat could support. Why weren’t there more of them? And why did their numbers then begin dropping off?

Everybody loves monarch butterflies, don't they? And for good reason. But if monarchs are all you know, you're missing out. Late summer is a great time to expand your butterfly horizons.

What’s shaped like a ball and white, less than a millimeter in diameter, and bounces like a Mexican jumping bean?. Jumping oak galls; they form around the larvae of tiny wasps as they feed on leaves. As the larvae mature, the galls fall to the ground, where they overwinter and the stingless wasps emerge as adults the following spring.

If you watch the sky in warm weather, you’re likely to see large, soaring birds from time to time. In our part of the country, most of those large soaring birds you’ll see are turkey vultures, which you can recognize from a long way off without help from binoculars or a field guide.

Some people love rabbits. “Soooo cute!!! More bunnies please,” was the response from one friend when I posted a rabbit picture online recently. More people, perhaps, have mixed feelings about them. “Love bunnies, but baby just ate a large butterfly milkweed I bought a few days ago,” added another friend. There are also among us plenty of people who look at rabbits pretty much the same way Elmer Fudd looks at Bugs Bunny; some 60,000 Illinois residents hunt rabbits.