Flora And Fauna
September 2026
Every article published in September 2026. 25 articles · Back to full archive
Uncategorized
The EU changed the design of billions of everyday drink containers by requiring their plastic caps to stay attached — loose caps were turning up in nature two to three times more often than the bottles themselves
Constellations
SN 1987A exploded 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud and was first spotted from Earth in February 1987; nearly four decades later, the James Webb Space Telescope has finally caught evidence of high-energy emission from what appears to be the neutron star left at its core
Flora And Fauna
In 2011, a male wolf known as OR-7 walked from northeastern Oregon into California, becoming the first confirmed wild wolf in the state since 1924, and his descendants now form breeding packs in Siskiyou and Lassen counties more than a century after the species was extirpated
Uncategorized
Off Hawaii, warm surface water sits above ocean water roughly 20°C colder, enough of a temperature difference to run a heat engine — engineers first generated net electricity from that contrast there in 1979
Water World
Why did a Southwestern desert river that had usually run dry below the U.S.-Mexico border for decades briefly reach the sea again in 2014, and what did biologists find growing in the wetted corridor by season's end?
Launch Pad
Norway, 5 September 2026: Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum reached orbit from Andøya, described as the first privately developed European rocket to do so and the first successful orbital launch from Western European soil
SpaceWar
Ten wolves in the first winter, 27 by April 2023: Isle Royale's relocated population grew after 19 animals were brought to the Lake Superior island, and modelling now gives better than an 80% chance it persists 20 years
Space Scopes
Roman is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief of astronomy, who helped build the Great Observatories program from Hubble to Spitzer
Flora And Fauna
In New Mexico's Carlsbad Cavern, hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats spiral out each summer evening and eat about three tons of insects, mostly moths and beetles, while Texas colonies intercept corn earworm moths above cotton country
Farm News
Why does breaching a single earthen levee along a Central Valley river reconnect juvenile salmon to floodplain rice fields where they grow up to five times faster than fish stuck in the main channel?
Early Earth
Ancient DNA shows the extinct American cheetah Miracinonyx, long cast as a pronghorn chaser, left Yukon fossils about 31,000 to 34,000 years old from cats that ranged far into the Arctic and ate fish
Nukewars
Why did the US Air Force designate a 106,000-acre live-fire training reservation in the southeastern Coastal Plain as a national stronghold for the red-cockaded woodpecker, and why does controlled artillery use appear to help the bird recover?
Earth
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside Denver manufactured nerve agents and pesticides for four decades, and after a Superfund cleanup the 15,000-acre site became a National Wildlife Refuge now hosting bison, bald eagles, and one of the largest urban prairie dog colonies in the country
Flora And Fauna
Sea otters along California's central coast that habitually use rocks to crack open snails and mussels show measurably less tooth damage than otters that bite prey directly, a difference biologists documented across years of tracking 196 radio-tagged animals at Monterey Bay and four other sites
Constellations