#conservation

#conservation

When Big Bear's celebrity bald eagle couple's eggs were eaten by ravens in late January, they didn't grieve alone. Thousands had watched Jackie and Shadow on livestream, as they meticulously arranged sticks in their nest high in a Jeffrey pine and nibbled each other's feathers in preparation for laying. All seemed just dandy until both eagles left their nest unattended, and ravens swooped in.

I'm not so sure that I've changed. I do not believe that we're going to go out and wholesale land from the federal government. Federal law says that we can't do that from the BLM itself.

Archaeologists have fought the tides to save a 17th-century shipwreck from a popular nudist beach in Dorset. The remains are believed to be part of the Swash Channel Wreck, a Dutch merchant ship called The Fame of Hoorn that ran aground while approaching Poole Harbour in 1631. The wreck was found on Dorset's Studland Beach at the end of January when Storm Chandra washed away the sand that had kept it hidden for almost 400 years.

Designed by Vi.architectuuratelier, De Zwarte Fles office renovation stands on the village square of Zwijnaarde near Gent, Belgium and brings new working life to a former country house shaped by four centuries of change. The project combines a restoration with a compact office addition fronted by a decorative facade, allowing the historic building to return to a residential presence while supporting a contemporary studio program.

Don't be afraid to say, 'I don't know,'

Rock iguanas once roamed freely across the islands of Turks and Caicos. Spotting one today, however, requires a bit of planning-and a boat ride. After centuries of hunting and the introduction of predators, the reptiles suffered a steep population decline and were classified as "critically endangered" in the 1970s. Today, things are looking slightly better for the green lizards, and in 2020, their classification was upgraded to simply "endangered." But that doesn't mean it's all smooth sailing for the iguanas.

A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints. The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.

The Centre's staff are stewards of the objects, and the architecture becomes an extension of that stewardship. Within this layered ecology of care, the object is framed not as an isolated artefact but as an embodiment of life-worlds and landscapes that nourish reciprocal relationships,

One of the most precious marine reserves in the world, home to sharks, turtles and rare tropical fish, will be opened to some fishing for the first time in 16 years under the UK government's deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Allowing non-commercial fishing in the marine protected area (MPA) is seen as an essential part of the Chagossian people's return to the islands, as the community previously relied on fishing as their main livelihood.

Everyone is not happy. Where to park? For all the flora it offers and 360-degree views it commands of the Pacific Ocean and Farallon Islands and the fjord-like valley carved by the estero, or tidal estuary, which serves as the border dividing Marin and Sonoma counties the preserve does have a few flaws, the most glaring of which is this: No dedicated parking lot.

Conservationists have now persuaded landowners to cut hedges in a more gentle rotation, with sections left uncut for up to three years, to enable more eggs to survive over winter. The caterpillars emerge with the foliage in spring and hatch into adult butterflies in July. The brown hairstreak is difficult to spot as a butterfly but every winter volunteers assess its populations by counting its minuscule cream-coloured eggs, which with careful searching are visible on the bare branches of blackthorn.

After nearly two decades, the baby whale came back-as a mother, with a baby of its own. Julie Albert, director of the Right Whale Sighting Network at Blue World Research Institute, a nonprofit, first laid eyes on the North Atlantic right whale known as Callosity Back in 2007 when it was still just a calf, swimming off the coast of Florida.

What makes this area special is the fact that it's not urban, it's not suburban, and it's not rural-it's a combination of all three,

Every winter about 10,000 elephant seals make their way to California's Año Nuevo State Park to fight, mate and give birth. The spectacle runs from mid-December through March, drawing wildlife watchers eager for a glimpse of the largest seals on the planet. During what park docent Laura Stern called "pupping season," bull seals - some reaching up to 16 feet (4.9 meters) in length and weighing up to 2.5 tons - engage in bloody battles for breeding access to the females.

Over the past year, a wave of high-profile development proposals - from oil fields and mining roads to timber projects - has reshaped a fast-moving debate, propelling Alaska into the center of the national conversation over how to balance energy production with conservation. These projects have revived long-running tensions over what the state's public lands are for, and who they ultimately benefit.

But as he swept his flashlight through the dark waters, something unexpected emerged. Inching through the beam of light, an alien creature crawled across the surface of the sand, resembling an inch-long cluster of ghostly leaves fringed with silvery filigree and capped with a pair of antennae-like stalks. It immediately caught my eye, said Gosliner, Invertebrate Zoology Curator for the California Academy of Sciences. I've been diving there for 30 years and this one immediately struck me as different.

The OpenRoad staff announced Wednesday that Mr. McConnell struggled with health problems after a stroke in 2023. His coworkers at OpenRoad described him as a human golden retriever in their tribute on social media. He made friends wherever he went, the staff said. He was the best road trip companion you could have, the biggest optimist we ever met, a human GPS with a steel trap memory, friendly to a fault, knowledgeable about most any subject, and filled the world with enthusiastic positivity.

We genuinely welcome feedback and ideas about the future of the Zoo, and we're always open to thoughtful public input. That said, the first time we saw this proposal was this week in a newspaper opinion piece, and we do not consider this idea realistic. Anyone can come up with a fanciful plan and pretty pictures, but these images do not reflect the complexity or responsibility involved in caring for animals, conservation of species, and operating a major public institution.

Not so for Willard Carroll Smith II, the Academy award, Bafta and Grammy-winning actor and rapper who enjoyed an uninterruptedly stellar career from the late 80s until 2022, when he put a crimp in things by lamping the Oscars' host Chris Rock for insulting Smith's wife. This was followed by a tour violinist suing him for alleged predatory behaviour, unlawful termination and retaliation, which is working its way through the California legal system now. Smith has categorically denied all allegations.

Hampstead Heath is one of London's most treasured parks. It's home to one of the best views of the London skyline, a Grade-II listed lido, three of the city's most beloved bathing ponds, a zoo, a grand manor house and acres of glorious woodland. And over the next five years, there are big plans to introduce even more attractions and conservation schemes to the space.

Kakapo breed only every two to four years when the native rimu trees mast and produce large numbers of berries, so repopulation is slow. This year a mega-mast is expected, resulting in a bountiful harvest of rimu berries, which could prompt the birds to produce more eggs. The rimu tree produces berries that provide enough nutrition for the birds to raise chicks. Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

A massive 243-kilogram (535-pound) bluefin tuna sold for a record 510 million yen ($3.2 million) at the first auction of 2026 at Tokyo's Toyosu fish market. The top bidder for the prized tuna at the predawn auction on Monday was Kiyomura Corp., whose owner Kiyoshi Kimura runs the popular Sushi Zanmai chain. Kimura, who has won the annual action many times in the past, broke the previous record of 334 million yen ($2.1 million) he set in 2019.

As the sun descends behind the Sierra de la Giganta mountains, I join the end-of-day procession to Loreto Bay National Park, a protected marine area in the Sea of Cortez. Fisherfolk, families, and out-of-towners stroll the Malecón, a mile-long esplanade that traces the water, watching as the sea turns the same sherbet hues as the evening sky. Seabirds dive-bomb for their dinner, and when a gray whale spouts remarkably close to shore, I hear myself gasp.

On a grey day in early June, a commercial plane landed at Norfolk Island Airport in the South Pacific. Onboard was precious cargo ferried some 1,700km from Sydney: four blue plastic crates with LIVE ANIMALS signs affixed to the outside. Inside were thumbnail-sized snails, hundreds of them, with delicate, keeled shells. The molluscs' arrival was the culmination of an ambitious plan five years in the making: to bring a critically endangered species back from the brink.

There isn't a nook or cranny in the Almaden Valley that Ali Henry hasn't spent time in. She grew up here, camping, boating and fishing with her dad and her grandparents. Those long, sun-drenched days on the water often finished with fresh-caught trout sizzling over a campfire. Today, Henry is devoting her life to preserving and celebrating some of her favorite childhood hangouts as Santa Clara County Parks' first-ever woman chief park ranger.