Every day, more and more wildlife habitat is lost to the spread of development. Give a little back by building your own humane backyard! It doesn't matter whether you have a small apartment balcony, a townhouse with a sliver of ground, a suburban yard, a sprawling corporate property or a community...
People in New York City expect to contend with millions of other humans. They don’t always realize that in some boroughs they also live side by side with thousands of bucks, does and fawns. So recently the city plastered its transit system with ads that carried pictures of these wild city residents...
The mountain lion known as P-47 survived fires, freeways and hostile ranchers. But in March, the 3-year-old big cat—tracked by California biologists since his kitten days—succumbed to a hidden hazard: an insidious form of food poisoning. Six anticoagulant compounds—chemicals used to kill rodents...
Here lies Lucy: expert pilot, supermodel, squirrel eviscerator, custom homebuilder, attentive mother and devoted mate. RIP. If she were human, Lucy might be commemorated this way, her life story etched in granite. She might take her place in a family plot beneath her favorite lookout, a weeping...
As my beloved seedlings languished untouched on the display table, I improved my sales pitch: “Would you like a late-flowering thoroughwort to help migrating butterflies refuel? What about an aster that’s the only pollen source for some bee species?” But unlike the animals who would devour these...
It’s not easy to write a book roundup for All Animals. As the magazine’s name implies, we don’t discriminate. A book that celebrates butterflies and birds but maligns squirrels and snakes will never make the cut. That narrows the field considerably but still leaves treasures for summer reading. From...
Hibernating bats have been dying in great numbers—90 to 100 percent of some colonies—from a disease known as White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), which causes a white fungus to appear on their noses, ears, wings, and tails. First discovered in 2006 near Albany, New York, WNS has spread rapidly across the...
Bats, like any other mammal, can carry rabies, but the incidence of rabies in bat populations is extremely low. Most human exposures occur when someone accidentally or carelessly handles a bat or is unaware they have been bitten. The National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends...
Meet the new neighbors—and surprise, they don’t want to eat you. As human and black bear populations expand and overlap, this native animal is under fire. But bear-friendly strategies show what can happen when we put down the guns and start cleaning up our acts. It was when Robert Scott ran into...
WARNING: The following story contains graphic content. On a Sunday evening in June, camo-clad men chat and laugh by pickups next to a restaurant near Billings, Montana. There is a faint but unmistakable odor of decay coming from a large trash bin across the parking lot—the just-weighed bodies of 29...
Standing in the street and admiring each other’s gardens one day, Sherrie Pelsma and her neighbor made a discovery: They’d become hosts to a buzzing block party. “We could actually see the air traffic of bees and butterflies crossing the street between our two habitats,” recalls Pelsma. “I said,...
With the right information and supplies, you may be able to solve some conflicts with wildlife by yourself. But when it’s time to call in a professional, here's how to find a humane, effective and ethical company. Ask for an inspection and written estimate It will be difficult for any company to...