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By JULIAN MENDOZA

MONTAGUE — Anywhere from 100 to 10,000 species go extinct each year, a rate 100 to 1,000 times faster than historic extinction rates, according to the American Museum of Natural History. Other species see their habitats condensed by urban development,...

By JAMES PENTLAND

AMHERST — Sharks have long been creatures of fascination, but having focused on them in his work for almost 10 years, UMass biology professor Duncan Irschick has found that most three-dimensional models are poor representations of the marine...

By CHRIS LARABEE

CHARLEMONT — The conclusion of a four-year study on the brown trout population in the Deerfield River has brought welcome news for anglers and river advocates.More than 80% of the brown trout population in the area of the Deerfield River from the Fife...

By BILL DANIELSON

Three or four times last week I noticed an enormous raccoon on my deck in the moments just before dawn. This was clearly a raccoon that was scrounging for any scraps left over from the meal that I had set out for the birds the evening before and I...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was Wednesday afternoon of last week and I had just returned home from a long day at work. I spent most of the drive home pondering the topic of this week’s column and reflecting on just how tired and worn out I felt. By the time I pulled down my...

By BILL DANIELSON

It was the Friday of my spring break week and the weather had finally improved. The previous weekend had been beautiful with record-setting high temperatures, but I had been fortunate enough to pick up a case of strep throat from one of my students...

By DAVID SPECTOR

Mallards are the ducks most likely to be seen in park ponds. The male is readily identified by his green head and narrow white neck-band; the brown female, superficially similar to the females of several other duck species, shares the male’s...

By BILL DANIELSON

I am sure that some of you may have looked at today’s photo and thought, “That’s not a plant.” I know that I had made a New Year’s resolution to focus more attention on plants this year, but Nature herself threw me a curveball when this gorgeous male...

By RENEE SEACOR and JOHN MAGURANIS

City dwellers take many forms. In Boston and cities across Massachusetts, hundreds of different species call our cities home, including foxes, raccoons, bald eagles and coyotes.It’s surprising for most urban dwellers to learn that species such as...

By BILL DANIELSON

In the year 1500, just a blink of an eye before Europeans started migrating into North America in large numbers, the ecology of the “New World” was relatively stable. Forests of various types dominated the eastern third of the continent, forests of...