USA Today reports on spooky street names across the nation.
Associated Press Art Director Nicolas Rapp is quitting his job next month to travel around the world solo with only his newly-equipped Land Cruiser.
NPR reports on the new law in San Francisco that makes recycling food scraps mandatory. It's the first program of its kind in the nation [that requires all businesses and residences to recycle organic waste], and so far, it's a mandate San Franciscans seem to relish. In fact, many residents and landlords began implementing the law before it took effect, using their city-provided food recycling bins to separate waste.Read the full story: Food recycling law a hit in San Francisco
"It doesn't smell so bad," says Linda Corso, the the Cathedral Hill Plaza apartments manager. "Our trash room doesn't stink like it used to."
That's because none of the wet garbage, the food waste, goes down there anymore, Ms. Corso says. Instead, food scraps go into sealed compost bins that get picked up by the city. Corso says the program has significantly trimmed the building's garbage costs.
"We used to have two bins picked up every day," she says. "Now we're down to one bin every day. So we've cut that in half."
Los Angeles Times travel blog reports on the study showing that bears at Yosemite National Park prefer to break into minivans more than other types of vehicles. [The] Journal of Mammalogy study [was] drawn from seven years of park data on bear-related break-ins.Read the full story: Yosemite bears' car of choice
Analyzing reports on 908 Yosemite Valley vehicle break-ins, authors Stewart W. Breck, Nathan Lance and Victoria Seher classified automobiles in nine categories. They found that 26% of the victimized vehicles were minivans.
The authors offer four possible reasons, beginning with one that won’t surprise many parents of small children. Perhaps, the authors say, the black bears like minivans because “minivans are more likely to emit food odors, based on the fact that minivans are designed for families with children, who are more likely to spill food and drink in a vehicle."
The Christian Science Monitor reports on German businessman who plead guilty in a federal court in Portland, Oregon this week for smuggling 40 tons of coral from the Philippines.Gunther Wenzek, [a German businessman from Essen], runs a company called CoraPet, which sells sand, pebbles, sponges, and shells for aquariums, terrariums, and ponds.Read the full story: German businessman smuggled coral into US from Philippines
According to documents filed in the case, Mr. Wenzek illegally smuggled two 20-foot shipping containers of coral into the US [from the Philippines to Miami and Portland in 2008]. The containers were falsely labeled as holding “rock” or “gravel.”
Travel + Leisure magazine via CNN reports on nature-loving fall travel on a budget.
Reuters reports that electric cars aren't as clean as touted according to a new scientific report. "For electric vehicles to become a major green alternative, the power fuel mix has to move away from coal, or cleaner coal technologies have to be developed," said Jared Cohon, the chair of a National Research Council report released on Monday called "Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use."Read the full story: Electric cars don't deserve halo yet: study
About half of U.S. power is generated by burning coal, which emits many times more of traditional pollutants, such as particulates and smog components, than natural gas, and about twice as much of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
Mother Nature Network reports on German farmers selling fresh produce via vending machine. [Farm] Peter-und-Paul-Hof spawned the idea as a solution to a problem which faces many local farmers worldwide. After efforts to deliver milk directly to customers became too time-consuming and costly, they first tried to encourage customers to collect the milk from fridges on their farm, but of course that only shifted the burden onto the customers. Vending machines simply offered them the smartest middle ground solution to the problem.Read the full story: Farmers using vending machines to sell produce
Perhaps even more unusual, the company has chosen to place several of these upstart Regiomats alongside popular hiking trails in Switzerland.
Global Post reports on how Kenya's drought is affecting not only the people but also the wildlife.“This is the third year without rain so all the grass is gone. What we’re left with is a barren land of carcasses,” Cynthia Moss (a renowned conservationist who studies the elephants of Kenya’s Amboseli National Park) told GlobalPost.Read the full story: Drought hits Kenya's wildlife
Moss said this year’s drought is about as bad as she has known in 37 years of researching Amboseli’s elephants. “We had very bad droughts in '76, '84 and 2000 but this is the worst I’ve seen. The old Maasai — the wazee — say it hasn’t been this bad since the 1960s.”
National Parks Traveler reports on the new National Park Service website that will enable travelers to plan their next trip.Dubbed Plan Your Visit to America's Best Idea (Your National Parks): Fall, Winter, Spring 2009-2010, the site provides a rundown of events and activities at the parks for the fall, winter and spring months. It also provides some tips, such as where to get the right pass for the parks, a suggestion that you stop at visitor centers and ask rangers questions, and, naturally, a suggestion that you visit www.nps.gov before you leave home to gather more information on the park of your choice.Read the full story: National Park Service launches new website
BBC Earth News reports on the study that shows how man-made noise torments animals.Sounds produced by vehicles, oil and gas fields and urban sprawl interfere with the way animals communicate, mate and prey on one another.Read the full story: Noise pollution threatens animals
The sounds are becoming so ubiquitous that they may threaten biodiversity, say the review's authors.
Even the animals living in protected National Parks in the US are being exposed to chronic levels of noise.
Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, three scientists based in Fort Collins, Colorado, US detail the extent to which noise pollution is now harming wild animals.
New Scientist reports on the rampant bush meat and illegal logging trades currently happening in Madagascar.In August, Conservation International reported that 15 bushmeat traders, contracted by a restaurant, were arrested carrying hundreds of endangered lemurs, which had been killed and roasted. "This happened in one of the country's best managed parks," says Edward Louis, a conservation biologist at the Omaha Zoo, who has been working in Madagascar for a decade. "If it's happening there, I can't begin to imagine what is happening elsewhere."Read the full story: Madagascar biodiversity under threat as gangs run wild
USA Today reports on Alaska's boom in polar bear tourism. Read the full story: Polar bear tourism booms on Alaska's North SlopeIt's not hard to understand the allure of these giant white bears. Regal and majestic, but also somehow cuddly, there is a natural magnetism that draws us. Add the sense that their future is in doubt, and it translates into heightened public interest in seeing bears. Worldwide, there are 19 known polar bear populations, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Two are in Alaska— the other is in the Chukchi Sea on the western coast.
In May 2008, the polar bear was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act after research indicated the sea ice vital to the bears' existence is declining. The decline is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
The Idaho Statesman has a gorgeous photo gallery of flowers and animals (like this trout taken by Roger Phillips) abundant around this time of year.
The Charlotte Observer reports that more deer are being hit by cars now that man is encroaching on their habitat. A new study shows deer-related crashes reported to police hit a high last year in Mecklenburg and across the state, as new residents and increasing development gobble up habitat.The above photo shows a deer just before it's hit by the Google Street View car.
Rapid growth across the state also means fewer places to hunt - still the most effective way to cull the deer population, said Jon Shaw, an N.C. Wildlife Commission biologist in charge of Mecklenburg and nine other western counties.
A Swiss resort is offering climate change hiking trips to show the changes in the landscape scientists say are the result of global warming.Click to watch the video: Climate change hikes in Alps
Mobile phones with GPS show the area as it once was, but melting and retreating glaciers have caused huge changes to the area - not least flooding and landslides.
Imogen Foulkes reports from the Swiss resort of Grindelwald.
CNN's iReport's latest travel picture submissions were of some spectacular waterfalls.
