News by Subject Biology

At the southern tip of the Himalayas, farmers in the Kangra region of India's Himachal Pradesh graze cattle among rolling hills and forests. The forests, under management by the state or farmer cooperatives, are thriving. But a new University of Illinois study shows, unlike state-managed forests, farmer cooperatives directly benefit both forest health and farmers.

White-tailed deer feeding habits shape the acoustic properties of their forest habitat, potentially affecting the vocal communication of understory-dwelling songbirds and other species, according to a study published Feb. 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Timothy J. Boycott from Vassar College, USA, and colleagues.

The experiment was spread over four continents, from the semiarid grasslands and savannas of Australia to lush pastures in Europe and prairies in America.

Twenty-five years into a 100-year federal strategy to protect older forests in the Pacific Northwest, forest losses to wildfire are up and declines in bird populations have not been reversed, new research shows.

In a paper recently published in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, a team of researchers, animal care experts and veterinarians evaluate the balance between animal welfare and conservation needs for a number of rare species of native birds being raised in San Diego Zoo Global breeding centers in Hawaii. The paper shares the challenges and complexity of situations where the needs of an individual and the needs of a species are weighed, and how that balance is achieved.

A new study published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications shows that certain endangered owls may continue to persist and even flourish after large forest fires.