Our Stories

The Latest by Shirley Hao

Senior Interactive Designer

A beaver lodge.
June 21, 2013

Engineers of the San Pedro River

By Shirley Hao  /  Rocky Mountain Office

And there’s a surfer among them

Wisdom preens her chick on March 7, 2013.
April 11, 2013

Monday Reads: Wisdom’s Ageless Inspiration

By Shirley Hao  /  Mid-Pacific Office

The (at least) 62-year-old mother keeps calm and carries on.

Bait-filled socks in action, in crystal clear photos.
September 24, 2012

Monday Reads: The Pacific Fisher & Socks Edition

By Shirley Hao  /  California Office

Who is the Pacific fisher, and why did he want your socks?

A caribou calf in the Western Arctic Caribou Migration in the Utukok Uplands, Alaska.
February 13, 2012

Monday Reads: The Amorous Arctic Caribou Edition

By Shirley Hao  /  Alaska Office

Oil pipelines + caribou = lots of baby caribou? One fishy equation

A polar bear on the Arctic's Chukchi Sea coast.
February 6, 2012

Monday Reads: The Arctic Nights Edition

By Shirley Hao  /  Alaska Office

All we know, to the best of our knowledge, is that we don’t yet know enough

January 23, 2012

Monday Reads: The Fine Particulate Matter Edition

By Shirley Hao

Just in time to ring in the Year of the Dragon, a few days ago, Beijing’s infamously murky air gained a long-awaited official index: real-time measurements of the city’s PM2.5 levels. PM2.5 (also known as soot) are microscopic particulate matter that contribute to the pea soup miasma of air pollution we can all do without. …

January 9, 2012

Monday Reads: The Hybridizing Shark Edition

By Shirley Hao

Climate change has been accused of being many things, from Imposter to Glacier National Park Name-killer. And now to the list we can add…Interspecies Dating Matchmaker? A study published last month in Conservation Genetics documented no fewer than 57 instances of hybrid common black-tip (Carcharhinus limbatus) and Australian black-tip (Carcharhinus tilstoni) sharks off the eastern …

September 6, 2011

Monday Reads: The Animals Predicting Earthquakes Edition

By Shirley Hao  /  Headquarters Office

Two weeks ago, a peculiar sensation was experienced up and down the Northeast. Some thought it might have been the zombie apocalypse finally unfolding; others, that perhaps they had ingested something disagreeable for lunch. Regardless, it gave more than a few people the unexpected opportunity to stretch their legs—and brush up on disaster preparedness. Slipping …

July 11, 2011

Monday Reads: The JFK Turtle Invasion Edition

By Shirley Hao

Here at Monday Reads, we’ve followed the jellyfish typhoon invasion, gardening goat invasion, and wolverine invasion-of-one. Finally, we’ve reached the turtle invasion. A few weeks ago, New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport awoke to find its Runway 4L under siege by waves of relentless reptiles. The Associated Press reported that the “slow-motion stampede” rather …

June 14, 2011

Monday Reads: The Never Too Late For Love Edition

By Shirley Hao

Two longtime bachelors are proving that it’s never too late to find love. Al (widowed) and Tex (serially dater) were getting up there in the years and were perhaps more than a bit rusty on the romance angle, neither having enjoyed the company of the fairer sex for decades. But when the lovely Patches and …