Restoring damaged land can look straightforward on paper: plant trees, repair soils and wait for vegetation to return. On the ground, the work is less predictable. Young plants have to survive drought, poor soils, fire, grazing and the other pressures that caused landscapes to deteriorate in the first place.Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, known as CONAFOR,…
Four concrete barriers blocked the way for salmon that once swam freely between the Pacific Ocean and the high desert reaches of Oregon and California for more than a hundred years. The dams were removed in 2024 as part of one of the largest dam removal projects in U.S. history, letting the river flow freely…
Representative Image (AI-generated) Antarctica has been losing mass for years as glaciers shed ice into the ocean, contributing to rising sea levels. But between 2021 and 2023, the continent experienced an unusual and temporary reversal. Instead of continuing to lose mass at its recent rate, Antarctica gained about 695 billion tonnes over 22 months, marking…
Picture of Myliobatis aquila. Image Credit: Wikipedia More than 100 ‘eagle rays’ were recorded gathering around a tuna ranch off the north-eastern coast of Malta. Scientists believe it is the largest aggregation of the species ever recorded. The remarkable sighting was captured during routine underwater monitoring in October 2024, when a remotely operated vehicle surveyed…
The study, published in Nature, could also change how scientists identify links between gut bacteria and disease. The human gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that together form the gut microbiome. These microbes play important roles in digestion, immune function and metabolism. Now, researchers led by the University of Vienna have found that common…
Chen Yuanhui. Image Credit: South China Morning Post Chen Yuanhui has spent more than four decades studying one of China’s rarest venomous snakes, even though his work has cost him part of a finger and repeatedly put his life in danger. The 77-year-old, widely known as the ‘Snake Doctor,’ discovered the ‘Mangshan pit viper’ and…
This photo taken on Aug. 10, 2026 shows a view of the Muz Taw Glacier in Altay, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Photos: Xinhua net) Researchers in China have tried to make artificial snow over China’s Muz Taw Glacier to slow its melting. The experiment conducted in 2018 involved seeding clouds with silver iodide,…
Archaeologists have uncovered skeleton inside the jar at the ancient Roman colony of Deultum (Image Credit: Archaeologia Bulgarica via Live Science) More than 1,600 years ago, as violence swept through a Roman settlement in what is now Bulgaria, a man appears to have made a desperate attempt to survive. He climbed inside a huge ceramic…
This behaviour has often been described as elephants visiting a “grave” or mourning their dead. But scientists say the reality is more complicated. An elephant herd comes across the remains of another elephant. Instead of simply walking past, some animals slow down, approach the bones, touch them with their trunks and sniff them. In some…
Image Credit: AI Generated Two Canadian students have developed a colour-changing toothpaste designed to make toothbrushing easier for children to understand. Ella Zhang and Gillian Leung, students at Havergal College in Canada, created ‘ToothTint’ as a school project that uses a natural pigment to change colour in response to conditions inside the mouth. The idea…
