Background Articles

"Our hunters have a vast knowledge on a healthy bird. They know what a healthy bird looks like. If a goose has the symptoms of avian flu … people shouldn't eat it," said George Diamond of Cree Public Health.

News of avian flu outbreaks in dozens of states in the lower 48 have wildlife managers and bird hunters on edge as the spring migration gets underway in Alaska.

Zoos across North America are moving their birds indoors and away from people and wildlife as they try to protect them from the highly contagious and potentially deadly avian influenza. Penguins may be the only birds visitors to many zoos can see right now, because they already are kept inside and usually protected behind glass in their exhibits, making it harder for the bird flu to reach them.

Bohemian waxwings are a wintertime fixture in Anchorage, darting in large flocks from one berry-filled tree to another.

Drought and extreme heat that scientists link to climate change are altering the UNESCO-protected marshlands. Iraq's average annual temperatures are increasing at nearly double the rate of Earth's.

Bird call on a November night in Anchorage. Maybe a great horned owl?

It's long been suspected that wild turkeys are to blame for Maine moose tick infestation. A new study proves that theory wrong.

Warming seas appear to have led to a large reduction in the number of puffins around Iceland in recent decades.

A federal regulator has lifted a stop-work order on tree cutting and grass mowing along the route of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

Three miles uphill from the Bering Sea beach, gulls darting in and out of the Nome landfill. Some of those birds are being exposed to antibiotics and, through that exposure, picking up bacteria with antibiotic resistance.

Work will stop until 21 August after the discovery of an Anna’s hummingbird nest during construction of TransMountain pipeline

A sobering warning on Earth Day: Scripps researchers say record-breaking ocean temperatures and toxin levels are harming local sea life.

There was a strong correlation between the observations of dead birds and wildfires and the toxic gases they produced, but not with the early winter storms.

Pine siskins, a type of finch, can spread salmonella bacteria when they poop on the high-traffic platforms

The particularly dangerous strain of avian influenza virus H5N8 has been detected in a mute swan found on the Kopli peninsula in Tallinn.

It doesn't look like Tromsø will get snow for a while.

A new report based on necropsies conducted by the USGS's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin suggests that the die-off was caused by long-term starvation and was likely exacerbated by a spate of freakishly cold weather.

The appeal was sent to president Putin on 30 October on behalf of Moscow and St Petersburg surfing federations, pointing his attention to the fact that traces of rocket fuel were found in samples from the polluted area. It means that the anthropogenic version of the recent environmental catastrophe mustn’t be brushed aside, the surfers say.

Now believed to be caused by an unprecedented algae bloom, the decimation of bottom-dwelling sea life may have devastating ripple effects.