clair084

Updated 10/17. Newest articles are at the bottom of the post. -------------------------------------------------------- Goats help planned rec center take a bite toward progress Animals clear the weeds for planned recreation, environmental center in city's Druid Hill Park By Meredith Cohn, BaltimoreSun.com The decrepit mansion once served as home to the president of the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, but two decades of brush has grown and, along with vandals, has made it uninhabitable. Cue the goats. In what's the first step to a $10 million project to transform this piece of Druid Hill Park into an environmental and recreational center for the city, the four-legged weed whackers have cleared a half-acre ring of ivy and other invasive species. The herd of 40 will be brought back to clear the rest of the 9-acre parcel that few have used, legally anyway, for years. "It's been an eyesore and has all sorts of unsavory activity going on," said Jean DuBose, director of deve...

Updated 3/20 -------------------------------------------------------- Vitex eradication effort gains traction Group tallies past year's accomplishments By Gareth McGrath, StarNewsOnline.com Fort Fisher, North Carolina - The invasive plant has been discovered in Virginia and in places in North Carolina thought to be vitex-free. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it shows that the educational and outreach efforts of the Carolinas Beach Vitex Task Force about the menace posed by the foreign invader are working. It also shows, however, that there's a lot of work to do to eradicate the shrub. It is native to the Pacific Rim and was once viewed as the savior of the coast, but it's turned out to be a huge biological menace. On Friday members of the task force gathered at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher to celebrate the past year's successes and discuss the remaining challenges facing the multi-state effort to eradicate beach vitex. Among the 2008 accomplishment...

Updated 2/12 Exotic fish pose threat to native species in Everglades By Curtis Morgan, Miami Herald The small pond six miles deep in Everglades National Park suddenly began bubbling like a pot aboil -- a telltale sign of air-slurping walking catfish. Dave Hallac, the park's chief biologist, dipped a net into the muddy commotion and hauled up a mess of wriggling slime so hefty it surprised even him. He counted out 56 fish from a single scoop. Walking catfish, along with other species originally imported for somebody's tank or table, outnumbered natives in this shallow, shady bayhead by an unhealthy margin. Unlike giant python, the Glades' most notorious invader, these dinky denizens don't draw attention to their presence by, say, swallowing an alligator and exploding. But for park scientists, their spread is no small concern. ''This is a problem that is 10 times worse than the python, but it's all under water, so nobody knows about it,'' Hallac said. ...

Updated 1/23 Help on way for New England cottontail By DAVID BROOKS Staff Writer, Nashua Telegraph The cutest endangered species in New Hampshire is getting some federal help – which is good, because the New England cottontail needs all the help it can get." This is one of our top priorities," John Kanter, the state's endangered-wildlife program coordinator, said of the elusive bunny. As recently as the 1960s, the New England cottontail was found from the Hudson River through southern Maine and also thrived in New Hampshire. Today, officials know of only 10 places where the species is found at all, mostly in a few flooded areas along the Merrimack River south of Concord and in the Seacoast. The New England cottontail, like many species, has suffered from changes in habitat. It likes brushy land in transition between field and forest, with lots of brambles and low bushes where it can hide and find food. That sort of thicket was common when New Hampshire was filled with far...