Nature Blog Network

Flora

A new method of examining the inner workings of plants has shed light on how they harvest the Sun’s energy.

Baylor botanist discovers new species of legume.

“We gardeners impose order on nature, but in a good way, right?”

Fauna

The fossil remains of a 43-foot snake whose species flourished between 58 million to 60 million years ago has been found in Colombia.

Traces of animal life have been found in rocks dating back 635 million years.

Bird watchers, get your binoculars ready! The 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count begins next week.

Natural Resources and Public Policy

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled Bush administration last-minute-granted oil and gas drilling leases on 77 parcels of federal land in Utah, near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

How Canadian climate-change money went down the policy drain.

Podcasts

BirdNote – flocking behavior, swans in mythology, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and more.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: due to the present economic mess throughout the world, BirdNote, a non-profit, has lost the support of a major donor. If you enjoy BirdNote and want it to continue, please consider making a small donation to them through their website.)

Birdwatch Radio – reporting from the exhibit floor of the 2009 Birdwatch America Backyard Nature Products Trade Show in Atlanta, Georgia; seven different guests including Amy Hooper, editor of WildBird magazine, and Denese VanDyne from birdJam are interviewed.

Green Week in Review – Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cancels contested drilling leases granted under the Bush administration in Utah. Energy Secretary Steven Chu warns that California is in peril from Climate Change. Joe Biden heads up a new jobs task force. And a New York Times editorial suggests that the administration return to the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling on the Clean Air Act.

Nature – new insights on sponges, quasars, problems with fisheries policy, and of course, a giant snake.

Nature Stories – conservation and skiing, or conservation versus skiing?

Sierra Club Radio – Dr. Jane Hightower, author of Diagnosis: Mercury; Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus of Stanford University and former editor-in-chief of Science magazine; Leila Salazar-Lopez of the Rainforest Action Network.

World on the Move (BBC) – World on the Move concluded with their final podcast on 16 December, 2008. However their site is still active and remains a great resource to use in order to locate older BBC stories pertaining to natural history topics.