Background Articles

An entomologist who works with the N.W.T. government said mosquito populations throughout the territory are lower than average. That’s because most types of mosquitoes "love water," and conditions in parts of the territory have been hot and dry instead. 

You could say Dave Jackson is Kodiak’s carrot kingpin. Carrots are one of the key vegetables in the gardening/farming practices in the archipelago's of Alaska

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has allowed for 1,500 grey seals to be hunted in the Baltic Sea and 630 harbour seals on the west coast.

Large, high-fat copepods — distantly related to shrimp and crab — are dwindling and loosing fat with the lack of sea ice from global warming.

Only certain Alaska Native people can hunt sea otters. But as otter populations have grown, so have calls to loosen federal laws protecting them.

The nation's six million feral pigs are destroying crops and preying on endangered species. But the most serious threat they pose is to human health.

A farmer in South Iceland is resorting to a unique method to combat a unique threat to his grain crops. RÚV reports that Björgvín Þór Harðarson, a pig and grain farmer in Laxárdalur, is using falcon-shaped kites to scare away the whooper swans that are consuming and causing significant damage to his crops.

As big fish crop up in unexpected places, experts say that they're relocating to new environments as waters warm.

For the past 5-6 years, salmon runs all over Bristol Bay have been very strong.“This year’s record-breaking return is the result of this careful stewardship,” said executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay. “Our lands and waters must be protected so future generations can continue our way of life and Bristol Bay can remain the salmon stronghold for the planet.”

An endangered species of whale that lives off the East Coast is having its best season for new babies in several years.

For the fourth year in a row, weekly summer water quality tests show that most Ketchikan beaches have elevated levels of bacteria that could make people sick. That happened this year even without dozens of cruise ships sailing through the Inside Passage and discharging wastewater.

Bocaccio rockfish have made a huge comeback in B.C. since being deemed endangered in 2013, but the success story is being met with some trepidation as trawler fishermen can’t seem to avoid netting them now.

Some biologists think the trend is related to the reduced hunting pressure from Outside hunters this year.

The shrinking of chinook, sockeye, coho and chum salmon has a negative impact on the number of eggs fish lay, but smaller body sizes also mean fewer meals, fewer commercial fishing dollars and fewer nutrients transported into rivers every year.

The size of salmon returning to rivers in Alaska has declined dramatically over the past 60 years because they are spending fewer years at sea, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Scientists have said the algae is spreading faster than anything they have seen in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Towering crags and peaks of the Canadian Rocky Mountains have been getting steadily greener over the past century, according to a new study.

Climate change leads to longer growing seasons in the Arctic. A new study shows that predators like wolf spiders respond to the changing conditions and have been able to produce two clutches of offspring during the short Arctic summer. The greater number of spiders may influence the food chains in Greenland.

Scientists discover Arctic wolf spiders are doubling their egg production due to warmer weather. At the Zackenberg Research Station in Greenland, the scientists observed wolf spider populations in the area between 1996 and 2014 and noticed the arachnids were laying many more eggs as the Arctic experienced warmer weather.