California released 37 orphaned sea otters into a bay scientists had already written off as dead — a desperate experiment that few believed could work. For fifteen years, the marine ecosystem showed no obvious signs of recovery, and experts quietly assumed the otters had vanished.
In 2001, biologists in California took 37 orphaned sea otter pups that had been found sick or stranded along the coast and released them into Elkhorn Slough, an estuary about 20 miles north of Monterey Bay. At the time, the site was in poor condition: more than half of its marshland had eroded since the 1950s, algae blooms were choking the eelgrass, and burrowing shore crabs were destabilizing the…
Nine thousand years of untouched swamp history vanished when the land was drained 260 years ago, and now the controversial decision to flood it again is finally underway. The massive restoration project aims to reverse generations of damage, reconnecting the land to its original waterways and reviving long-lost habitats.
In August 2011, Hurricane Irene delivered 12 inches of rain onto an active wildfire in Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp. The fire, already burning for weeks, continued for a total of 111 days, smoldering beneath the floodwater. The rain could not reach the fire because the fire was not burning on the surface. It was burning inside the peat soil itself.The Great Dismal Swamp is a peatland on the Virgi…