Stories
The great shearwater is a seabird commonly seen off the New England coast. It’s not particularly striking — to the untrained eye, it looks like a brown seagull with long wings. It eats by diving underwater, grabbing prey and then returning to the surface to swallow it down. The birds aren’t rare or endangered, but…
Read More
Biologist Karen Malkus’s laboratory in the Barnstable Town Offices features a marble vanity with a mirror framed by light bulbs. “It used to be … the ladies’ room, which is now converted into the lab,” she said recently. Pipettes and amber bottles crowd Malkus’s lab bench. Mostly, she works with her microscope, and device called…
Read More
In early August, carpenter Michael Forgione told his mother that he was heading out to go crabbing in the brackish waters of Chilmark Pond on Martha’s Vineyard. Carol Forgione, a 72-year-old nurse practitioner, wished him a good catch. “This is the pond,” she said on a recent visit. “This is the entrance that he went…
Read More
Last month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrapped up a public comment period on its controversial plan to remove toxic PCBs from the Housatonic River. The agency said it hopes to issue its final plan by the end of the year. That would be before any possible change at the White House. It can take…
Read More
The state’s new law that bans household food scraps in landfills went into effect on July 1. Vermonters are getting on board with the new system, which means transfer stations are struggling to keep up and new businesses are popping up to haul the food scraps to composting facilities. For the past three months or…
Read More