Archives: Highlights
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Community Action to Save Coral Reefs
This community in Hawaii is rallying together to study and protect local corals. Students, volunteers, and scientists work to collect and categorize fragments broken off from the reef, which then become candidates to breed before the new coral is reintroduced back into the ocean.
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Breeding Heat-Resilient Corals
Corals are vital to ocean health, but they’re susceptible to rising water temperatures and can “bleach” under too much heat stress. Hawaii’s Coral Resilience Lab is breeding corals that are resilient to these hotter ocean temperatures – then they populate reefs with new corals that can finally beat the heat.
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Manatee Rehabilitation
Florida manatees are in dire straits, having lost much of their available habitat and food sources in recent decades. Thanks to the work of Zoo Tampa and other researchers, the population is finally able to recover and return to the rivers they once called home.
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Restoring Crystal River
Florida’s Crystal River used to be a rich seagrass ecosystem: a perfect source of food for the many manatees that once thrived there, before an invasive algae overtook the riverbed. Now, efforts to restore the habitat are underway – and they’re working!
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Restoring Ancient British Wildlife
Derek Gow has turned his farm into a breeding center to help rewild all of Britain. He’s raising rare white storks, native harvest mice, water voles that can help restore wetlands throughout the country.
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Meet the Water Vole
Derek Gow has helped bring beavers back to Britain, and their impact on local landscapes and biodiversity has been immense. Now, he’s scaling up a breeding program to export another wetland engineer—the water vole—all across the country.
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Tracking Baby Leatherbacks
Leatherback turtles never stop swimming! This Florida lab uses tiny tethers so young hatchlings can swim constantly but avoid bumping into the wall of the tank. When they’re old enough, the young turtles are fitted with satellite trackers and released into the wild.
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Protecting Turtle Nests
Beaches across Florida are a key habitat for nesting sea turtles. To keep hatchlings safe, teams patrol the beach at dawn to look for turtle tracks, safeguard nests, and even help those left behind make their way to the sea.
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Meet the Gopher Tortoise!
Gopher tortoises create deep burrows that give critical shelter to over 350 species of insects, mammals, birds, and amphibians throughout the southeastern US. Their blood may be cold, but their heart is all warm inside!
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Meet the Indigo Snake!
Indigo snakes prey on other snakes—even venomous ones—but are still docile-enough to be handled by young children. Now, a one-of-a kind breeding program is raising these gentle giants and returning them to forests across the southeastern US.
