A Vinyl County Almanac

  A northern long-eared bat suffering from white nose syndrome (1). A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted to block the uplisting of the northern long eared bat from threated to endangered status and to prevent the lesser prairie chicken being from listed under the Endangered Species Act at all. With the Senate having already passed similar measures earlier this year, the two bills will now be sent to President Biden, who it seems likely will veto them. Still, these acts of Congress suggest a precarious future for federal protection of both species and also add to concerns over the future of the Endangered Species Act more generally at a time when we should be stepping up our conservation efforts. There are a lot of things that we could be talking about in the aftermath of this vote, but right now, I want to focus on a press release put out by House Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee. The release contains a few statements from different lawmakers explainin...

 As much as I love being outside, I also can't help, but sing the praises of the occasional rainy day spent curled up indoors. There's just something very cozy and comforting about sitting around with your friends, family, coworkers, or even just by yourself in a warm, dry box of artificial light, pushing out again the dreary shadow of the clouds. Days like this were some of the only ones, when I was in school, where I wasn't distracted at least once by the desire to go outside and explore. Having now worked several eight-hour fall days in the cold and rain as a field tech, I'm also pretty content as an adult to take shifts indoors when made necessary by the weather.  While shifting breezes and churning clouds are, for us humans, usually taken as signs to seek shelter, there are plenty of organisms out there for whom rainy days are calls to do the opposite, to leave hiding places behind to do what must be done in the open. This is especially the case for amphibians and ...