EXPLORING NATURE: VARIOUS NEWS

I have good news and bad news on various environmental issues.

Good news is that an agreement has been reached to remove four large dams on the Klamath River on the Oregon-California border. This will be the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history and will reopen 400 miles of prime salmon habitat.

Bad news is Amazon used enough plastic bubble wrap in 2019 to encircle the globe 500 times. There’s got to be a more eco-friendly packing material.

In-between news is that three men were banned from Yellowstone National Park after they attempted to cook two chickens in a geyser. I guess that sort of thing could easily get out of hand, but I do wonder how the chicken would taste. I’ve seen those geysers and they have all sorts of minerals in the water.

In the category of things I never knew about is the bulletin out of the Galapagos Islands that the pink land iguana is in danger of going extinct. This iguana has been cited as one of the most important new species in the development of evolutionary science in this century.

They are scurrying around to collect pink iguana eggs and to establish a captive breeding program to increase their population, much like the program that helped save the whooping crane from extinction.

Long ago, I visited the Galapagos and was fortunate to see Lonesome George, a giant tortoise on display at the park headquarters, where he calmly ate leaves and ignored all the female tortoises his keepers tried to entice him to breed with. He was one of a kind and when he passed on, his special DNA passed with him.

I hope they have better luck with the pink iguanas.