Ecological

A study highlights that invasive plants can stay dormant for decades to centuries before becoming ecological threats, underscoring the importance of considering dormancy in managing invasions.Non-native species can remain dormant for decades or even centuries before they begin to spread.According to a new study led by the University of California, Davis, invasive plants can stay dormant for decades or even centuries after they have been introduced into an environment before rapidly expanding and wreaking ecological…

An invasive species of crayfish that reproduces by cloning itself was discovered last summer in a Burlington, Ont., park — the first time the marbled crayfish has been identified in the wild in North America.Since then, a group of experts has been working to stop the species from spreading. The crayfish are in City View park, on Burlington's southwest border with Hamilton.Brook Schryer, a member of the working group responding to the detection, told CBC Hamilton that it seems the population was contained after the pond…

A few years ago, a couple of Google employees reached out to a Minnesota scientist with an unusual proposal: What if they could teach computers to spot beaver habitats from space? "They wanted to know if I thought it was possible to find beaver wetlands from aerial imagery myself, and then if that could be scaled up with machine learning," Emily Fairfax, a University of Minnesota beaver researcher and assistant professor of geography, told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.Fairfax knew that beavers' sprawling dams…

Not far from the bank of Wapiti River, just 11 kilometres from Grande Prairie, there's a paleontological goldmine: an ancient riverbed that contains fragments of skeletons of hundreds, possibly thousands, of animals from the late Cretaceous period, some 70 million years ago. Discovered in 2014,  the bonebed is known as a DC site, or, more formally, Wapiti Unit 3.It yields a wide range of fossils and teeth from many species of prehistoric vertebrates, said Corwin Sullivan, a University of Alberta paleontologist who does…

The Current11:34A hand-drawn map with no people, but 1,642 free-roaming animalsRead Transcribed AudioArtist Anton Thomas wanted to draw a "world map of nature" that would showcase the many different species across the globe — but at one point he was a little worried he'd run out of animals."I thought before drawing, 'Oh, surely I would run out of species across the Southern Ocean or the vast South Pacific,'" said Thomas, a New Zealand man now living in Melbourne."But no, there was just always more to choose from," he…

An underwater marine survey completed at West Mabou Beach in Port Hood has yielded some interesting results that shed new light on what species dwell in Nova Scotian harbours.The survey was completed by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and their findings were released at a public meeting in the Cape Breton community of Mabou on Monday evening.Information Morning Cape Breton host Steve Sutherland spoke with Hunter Stevens, a biologist with the group, who co-ordinated the survey and was one of the divers…

An exploding population of hard-to-eradicate "super pigs" in Canada is threatening to spill south of the border, and northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are taking steps to stop the invasion.In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat.Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada's leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, "the most invasive animal on the planet" and "an ecological train wreck." They are often…

The war, unsurprisingly, has made conservation a lot harder. Oleg Dyakov, a rewilding officer from Rewilding Ukraine’s head office in Odesa and one of the organization’s cofounders, recounts the hazards his teams have faced with a casual frustration. Marine mines drifting in from the Black Sea stalled the release of fallow deer, and monitoring activities of Dalmatian Pelicans were limited to binoculars and telescopes because parts of the Delta were restricted by the Ukrainian government. (In peacetime, they’d have been…

After a long drive on busy highways, through neighbourhoods of large suburban houses and paved driveways, Tomlinson Park is an unlikely oasis of lush greenery. The park, which is in Markham, Ont., at the northeastern edge of Toronto, hugs the Rouge River and is the site of a major ecological restoration effort just steps away from people's homes.On a cloudy day in June, hundreds of volunteers were planting trees and shrubs in an effort to restore a barren part of the park."In 10 to 15 years, they should grow up to 20, 30,…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists developed a cost-effective model that promotes ecological connectivity by incorporating wildlife management in land-use planning, focusing on the Oak Ridge Reservation. The framework uses conservation measures like buffers and open-bottom culverts, benefitting from 30 years of data from the reservation.Modeling Healthier Habitats on Managed LandsOak Ridge National Laboratory researchers developed a model framework that identifies ways to ensure wildlife can safely navigate their…