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Are Yellowstone floods a good thing?
In today’s newsletter, we show how Yellowstone’s floods have helped the region, spot endangered lions in West Africa, follow people loving nature through ‘Bigfoot’ tours … and examine a plan to save an Alpine glacier.
The chocolate-colored waters rushed down mountainsides and frightened and shocked people around Yellowstone National Park. But could the historic floods actually restore the iconic and culturally important landscape?
“As humans, we often think that floods are disastrous, and fires are disastrous, but they're really only disastrous because we put human lives and property in harm's way,” Scott Bosse, director of American River’s Northern Rockies office, tells Nat Geo. “They’re extremely healthy for rivers, and especially for a river like the Yellowstone.”
Stoneflies will benefit, as will the American Dippers who feast on them. So will osprey, eagles, and river otters, says Pat Byorth, who directs Trout Unlimited’s Montana Water Project. “This is a complete remodel of the aquatic ecosystem and it's a beautiful thing.”
Read the full story here.
Life goes on: A flock of American White Pelicans (pictured above), one of the largest birds in North America, floats along the Yellowstone River, searching for fish. Pictured at top, the torrent carried away mature trees and devoured whole sections of roads.
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
The race is on: Can authorities save West Africa’s endangered lions? The rare branch of lions, more closely related to India’s Asiatic big cats than to those in Africa’s southern savannah, fetch high prices from poachers. Nat Geo, accompanying conservationists, gets close to them in this absorbing account: “We hear paws crunching through dry leaves close by. We’ve been here all night, staking out the bait, but are suddenly very awake.” (Above, in Senegal, a radio-collared female named Florence lies alongside a female pride member.)
STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING
• How to measure your carbon footprint
• Why a placebo can work even when you know it’s fake
• What sustainable tourism means
• How did we end up with a Declaration of Independence?
• The long-buried secrets in the Maya ruins of Palenque
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The hunt for history: Until the Nazis shut it down, a German institute had housed the world’s first known LGBTQ+ archive. For decades, people have searched for the remnants of the collection, much of it confiscated by Hitler’s thugs in 1933 (pictured above). The trail, Nat Geo’s Nina Strochlic reports, led to a dumpster in Vancouver decades later.
THE NIGHT SKIES
Hitched to a parallelogram: With mostly moonless nights this week look for the brightest star in the Summer Triangle. Vega is the placeholder for Lyra, a small constellation that looks like an equilateral triangle hitched to a parallelogram (pictured above). Just below Vega, those with keen eyesight or binoculars will notice a pair of stars known as Epsilon Lyrae. These celestial twins are themselves double, forming a spectacular quadruple star system known as the “Double-Double.” Lyra is also home to the Ring Nebula, a pale, doughnut-shaped circle that is a shell of gas thrown off by a dying star. Astronomers think that our sun will undergo the same death throes. No need to worry; that won’t be for another three billion to five billion years! —Andrew Fazekas
IN A FEW WORDS
LAST GLIMPSE
The quest to save winter: Swiss glaciologist (and amateur violinist) Felix Keller has a plan to stop Morteratsch Glacier’s retreat. Like photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Ciril Jazbec, he grew up in the Alps when snow was plentiful. Keller, who wants to recycle glacial meltwater, has tested a prototype of one of the “snow cables” that, hanging over the glacier, would shower it with 30 feet of snow annually (pictured above, part of an out-of-season post on our Instagram page that has more than 100,000 likes). “People say this is completely nuts,” he admits to Nat Geo about his effort. “Maybe they’re right.”