Laura R LaBarge

The mission to keep the borderlands wild In the rugged terrain where Mexico and the United States meet, a border wall is just the latest obstacle fragmenting habitats and disrupting migration paths. Here’s how a cadre of conservationists is trying to get animals moving.

The Sky Islands still show green arteries from above.
Much of the wildlife connectivity is already severed.
Conservation, at this stage, means keeping the remaining threads open for as long as possible.

An Army Corps project could wipe out one of Florida’s last thriving coral reefs The fate of one of the last thriving coral reefs in Florida may be imperiled by plans to widen the shipping channel leading into Port Everglades.

The US army corps of engineers is considering, right now, what would be the largest destruction of coral reefs in US history. To make a port slightly bigger.

People know this, right?

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

🧪🦑🌎

Are you a mycorrhizal fungal researcher?
Apply now to be a 2026 Underground Explorer.

🖋️Grant amount: Up to $10,000 USD
🗓️Deadline: 22 March, 2026 at 23:59 UTC-10:00 (Hawaii)
🔗Link to apply: www.spun.earth/expeditions/...

DHS is pushing to wall off Big Bend National Park, a crown jewel of America’s natural heritage.

Yet across the 517-mile Big Bend Sector— an area larger than California—DHS apprehended just 151 migrants last month. The park itself is only a tiny slice of that vast, remote border.

Birds are changing — and Indigenous memory is the longest record we have Conservation has long depended on measurement. Populations are counted, habitats mapped, trends plotted against baselines that often extend back only a few decades. Yet many ecosystems began changing ...

In much of the world, the longest continuous records of environmental change reside not in databases but in memory, language, and daily practice.

news.mongabay.com/2026/03/bird...

Study finds bat population crash increases insecticide use | The Western Producer I’ve written before in this column about the bat disease that has decimated North American populations. As a brief refresher, white nose syndrome is a

From the University of Calgary faculty of VetMed (who we have worked with) a good article in the Western Producer about the importance of bats to agriculture & human health. A discussion of the Frank(2024) paper. 🦇🌎🧪
www.producer.com/livestock/st...

Decisions at upcoming #CMSCOP15 will have far-reaching implications for biodiversity conservation, ecological connectivity, and sustainable development.

We are urging action to halt the accelerating decline of migratory species worldwide, like giant otters.

🌎 Get updates: www.wcs.org/cms-cop15

The point is to destroy the administrative state, centers of knowledge and all civic institutions that stand in the way of Russell Vought’s vision of an authoritarian theocracy. It sounds insane and something out of Atwood. But this is where we are. Under his eye.

Excited to share the first paper of my PhD project where we looked at how changes in legal protection have influenced the population dynamics of wolves in the US 🐺

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

@consletters.bsky.social

When pets devour biodiversity. My new article on the European edition of @uk.theconversation.com about the impacts of pet-wildlife interactions and the opportunities for their legal regulation in the EU. theconversation.com/our-pets-are.... Related paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public Health—particula...

"Private money cannot replace public funding of science"
Thank you @naomioreskes.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪 🌊 ⚒️ #scipol

Federal panel behind cancer screening recommendations hasn’t met in nearly a year The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's meetings have stalled as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has reshaped other federal advisory committees.

Infuriating.

Cover of The Lancet:

@thelancet.com
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

A mountain lion captured at night by a camera, standing on rocky terrain with surrounding bushes. The Cascades Carnivore Monitoring Program logo is visible in the lower right corner.

Four wolves in a forested area. The wolves are standing among trees, with one closer to the foreground looking towards the camera. The logo for Cascades Carnivore Monitoring Program is present in the top left corner.

A Cascade red fox is walking on a snowy forest path surrounded by trees. In the lower right corner, there is a logo with the outline of two animal heads and the text "Cascades Carnivore Monitoring Program."

Just flipping through a few (nearly 1.5 million) of our fave wildlife images from remote camera stations in the Cascades! Zoo folks are helping to review photos as part of the highly collaborative Cascades Carnivore Monitoring Program. Check out this project: https://bit.ly/3ZIWwGE

Project Officer, Natur Am Byth! (Swansea Bay’s Stars of the Night) - Swyddog Prosiect Natur Am Byth! (Sêr y Nos Bae Abertawe) - Bat Conservation Trust Fixed term, Home based, Part-time (22.5 hrs/week)£30,000 - £32,000 pro rata depending on experience (£18,000 - £19,200 at 0.6 FTE)

🦇We are recruiting! We are seeking a Project Officer to deliver the last 2 years of the Swansea Bay’s Stars of the Night project, a component of Natur Am Byth!

Fixed term, Home based, Part-time (22.5 hrs/week).

Deadline: 9am, 13 March www.bats.org.uk/the-trust/jo...

The cameras will now collect year-round data to support wildlife management and conservation research in the region.

Follow for more stories from the field 🤎 3/3
 
#Fieldwork #Dayinthelife #ConservationScience #Yukon #Moose

From helicopters to heavy backpacks, teams navigated challenging terrain to install and fine-tune each camera 2/3

This past summer, WCS Canada staff partnered with Selkirk First Nation to deploy wildlife cameras in central Yukon to study how human activity shapes moose habitat use 🫎1/3

“Like climate change denialism, invasive species denialism is toxic” and “does a disservice to conservation.” PREACH 🙌💯 #iccb2025

🧪🐻🚨We're hiring techs for bear work this summer: jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id...

Atlantic Puffin at Hornøya, Norway

New opening for a 3-year PhD project in 'Seabird Ecology in a Changing Arctic' at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (Tromsø) and the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). Apply before 25 Mar 2026. #seabirdscience @ninanatureresearch.bsky.social nina.attract.reachmee.com/jobs/84-phd-...

⏳ Deadline approaching!

This is a final reminder that our Training Grants closes on the 28th of February.

If you are from a BAME background, and would like to gain seabird volunteering/ ringing experience we can provide support up to £250.

For more info: www.seabirdgroup.org.uk/grants

Photo shows a tiger close to a trail camera lens. It is a youngish individual with orange-red fur

Responsible wildlife news reporting is vital. It reduces the risk of human-wildlife conflict and helps keep the people who live alongside wildlife safe and well-informed.

🐅 The Living with Large Carnivores project is changing the narrative around leopards, tigers and other predators in India.

1/3

it is really bad how many people across the political spectrum on social media seem to discuss things in terms of discredited genetic pseudoscience when it comes to identity

🚨JOB alert🚨

We have three (yes, THREE) 🌟lectureships🌟 advertised in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.

Broad remit, including #AnimalBehaviour & #GlobalChangeBiology

⏱️Deadline: 8th March 2026
🙏Please circulate widely

😊Come join us!

Full #job details: tinyurl.com/y3us95rc

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

"But he didn't know" okay, great, but did he speak out against an overtly sexist, racist power broker, or did he accept the invitations and the money? Because this culture doesn't just happen. It's created by the consent of the people who have access to those spaces.

19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

My post-doc Charlotte King will be starting her own Minerva research group in September and is looking for PhD students. Click here if you are into experimental biomechanics, apes and hominin evolution.

www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

The Amazon’s most valuable export isn’t timber — it’s rain Rainfall is often treated as a gift of geography — a function of latitude, oceans, and atmospheric circulation. A growing body of research suggests that in the tropics, it is also a product of…

Tropical forests generate vast rainfall through “flying rivers,” meaning farms & cities may depend on ecosystems far away.

Even small-scale clearing can reduce precipitation, threatening agriculture, river flows & hydropower. In the Amazon, this rainmaking service is worth tens of billions yearly.

Last week to apply! Don't miss this chance ✨

Migratory bird stopover patterns linked to urbanization and social landscapes - Nature Cities Urban ecology traditionally focuses on single cities, yet cities play key roles in ecological processes such as migration. Radar analysis across the continental USA reveals that nearly half of stopove...

A study I led came out in Nature Cities yesterday!

We used radar to study the role that urban landscapes play in migratory bird stopover. Spoiler: birds use cities a lot, and the patterns of their use reflect social processes and the inequities embedded in them.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...