Stories
For many Connecticut residents, the impacts of an ongoing drought extend only as far as brown lawns or wilting flowers in a garden bed. But weeks of dry weather are having a more serious impact on the state’s agriculture industry, forcing farmers to buy extra water and recalibrate their plans for harvest. “Connecticut dairy men…
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Alicea Charamut went for a hike last weekend to a place where she thought her dog would have a chance to cool off with a swim. Devil’s Hopyard State Park, in East Haddam, Connecticut, has a big waterfall. But on this day, the water was barely flowing and Charamut’s dog found no relief. “There was…
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Most of the year, New Hampshire’s Forest Health team is on the ground, in the woods, doing what they can to protect the state’s trees. But for a few days every summer, they get to soar above it all. Foresters Bill Davidson and Kyle Lombard make up the two-person operation affectionately known as the Bug…
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People normally aren’t excited to find garbage on the bottom of a pond, but for an unusual group of underwater trash collectors on Cape Cod, there’s a certain exhilaration when the biggest discovery of the day suddenly appears 8 feet below the surface. “We found the tire!” exclaims Diane Hammer, who sits in a kayak…
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In the 1980s, a rare and elusive amphibian called the spadefoot toad vanished from its habitat in Falmouth, Mass., on Cape Cod. For the last decade, conservationists have tried to bring it back. Now they believe they’ve reached a breakthrough in that quest. The story begins each year in springtime, when Mass Audubon researchers don…
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Recreationists and wildlife have to coexist. But there are times when wildlife need their distance from the humans that like to explore their habitat. For a handful of sites around New Hampshire, that means closing certain areas over the spring and summer so peregrine falcons can nest. Peregrines were considered endangered until the late 1990s,…
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Just off the bike path in Somerville, Mass., Michael Collins waded through the bushes and picked up a metal box. Collins popped open the lid — and immediately noticed a rancid smell. A dead rat was decomposing inside. “I’d say it’s a juvenile,” said Michael Collins, of Modern Pest Services, as he slid the rodent…
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A group of Connecticut cicadas disappeared nearly 70 years ago. Scientists still search for answers.
On a hill overlooking the Fenton River Valley, John Cooley gestures to a horizon blanketed with trees. It’s the bucolic embodiment of New England’s forested landscape. It’s also the scene of a mystery that’s puzzled scientists for nearly 70 years. What happened to a group of periodical cicadas that used to live here? “You would…
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A global conservation collaborative — the International Union for Conservation of Nature — has declared North America’s migrating monarch butterflies endangered. The designation doesn’t carry regulatory weight — but it sends a strong message that the species is in trouble. Eastern monarch butterflies spend their summers along the eastern seaboard and migrate thousands of miles every…
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For decades, scientists from around the world have been visiting a mature forest just off the interstate, about 30 miles north of Bangor. They’ve undertaken groundbreaking studies on acid rain, forest ecology and soil health. NASA used it for a remote sensing project. And at one point the 550-acre Howland Research Forest was the most…
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