Bugs with barcodes: Trapping blitz in national parks targeted the tiny
When we think of the wildlife in Canada's national parks, it's moose, bears, snakes, grey jays, trout and chipmunks that come readily to mind.
It’s no use cursing over spilled crude
In March 1989, an oil tanker sailing south from the Alaska pipeline port of Valdez struck a reef in eastern Prince William Sound. At least 11 million gallons (42 million litres) of crude oil spilled into the sea and onto the shore.
The Canol Heritage Trail was a family affair
When he makes his presentations in the Yukon later this month, geographer Peter Kershaw plans to lead his audiences through the marvels and sorrows along the Canol Heritage Trail.
Pliocene pollen grains reveal a warm, wet Klondike
The Yukon's gold fields are famous for yielding up the remains of large creatures that roamed the mammoth steppes of Beringia during the Pleistocene - the chilly epoch that lasted from about two and a half million years ago to 11,700 years ago.
Yukon’s largest lake gets a thorough biophysical
When University of Alberta graduate student Ellorie McKnight began working on her biology master's thesis project, her primary research focus was: "How are large northern lakes being affected by climate change?"
Fewer nighthawks grace the aerial diner
When Andrea Sidler was four or five and growing up in Atlin, B.C., her parents directed her gaze to two common nighthawk nestlings on the ground beside the trail to the family home.
Mercury and the North’s lake bottom line
Thanks to natural, high-altitude transportation processes, mercury and other pollutants generated far to the south can enter northern food chains.
NASA sponsors a closer look at Dall sheep and the warming North
"The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is interested not just in what's going on in outer space, but they also want to use their satellites to understand what's going on on Earth," says wildlife ecologist and Dall sheep expert Laura Prugh.
Boreal bank swallows: suddenly a hot topic
It often requires an informed, enthusiastic visitor to remind us not to take the "wild" in our Wilderness City for granted.
Tiny ice age relic lurks along the Dempster
"It's easy to forget what's lurking in our world - things we don't see everyday," says McGill University biology professor Christopher Buddle by phone from Montreal.
Environmental DNA: Promising new tool is easier on scientists and their subjects
Crime fighters have been using environmental DNA analysis for many years, says Yukon biologist Bruce Bennett.
Making sense of mixed messages from the mammoth steppe
The icon of the mammoth steppe, Mammuthus primigenius, is well represented in the Yukon’s fossil record. Thanks to remains preserved in permafrost from the Klondike gold fields and Old Crow.
Bumblebee research: some hard facts and soft fuzz
Before I can step into Environment Yukon’s Whitehorse headquarters on Burns Road, I’m met at a nearby flowering lupine by a large, fuzzy, loud and somewhat aggressive bumblebee.
Yukon finds force scientists to rethink the camel family tree
Paleontologists can never completely put their favourite theories about life during the Pleistocene epoch to gentle rest. Ice age creatures have a knack for sowing doubt and sparking debate tens of thousands to millions of years after their deaths.
Arctic dinosaurs demand their due
This weekend, Roland Gangloff, author of Dinosaurs Under the Aurora, is bringing news of a revolution in Arctic paleontology to Whitehorse and Haines Junction. Gangloff is a former professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
A bird in the hand helps students recognize many birds in the bush
Five years ago, Shyloh van Delft attended a young-ornithologists' workshop at Long Point Bird Observatory on Lake Erie in Ontario. She was less than thrilled to be presented with a dead bird to skin out and prepare as a study specimen.
The Mayo B rearing channel: ‘thinking fish first’
In 1952 the Mayo hydro power project began supplying electricity to Elsa, Keno City, the United Keno Hill mine and the community of Mayo.
Tantalizing ancient site emerges from riverbank forest
Ice age settlers who frequented what is now referred to as the Britannia Creek site, halfway between Dawson City and Fort Selkirk on the Yukon River, would be amazed to see that area today.
‘Out of the blue’: Surprise human remains and artifacts tell an ice age tale
In 2010 and 2013, Alaskan archeologist Ben Potter led teams that discovered the remains of three ice-age Alaskans near the Tanana River.
Share life in the slow lane with sloths
When Greg McDonald embarked on a career in vertebrate paleontology at Idaho State University, the first of a series of far-sighted professors helped steer him to giant ground sloths.