(The Painted Lady Butterfly has hardly appeared this year. Photo by Chris Stewart)

UC Davis Professor Arthur Shapiro, considered one of the most prominent butterfly trackers in North America, said Monday he has found fewer butterflies this year than at anytime since he came to California 35 years ago.

"We have a severe depression of butterfly numbers at the lower elevations in Northern California, particularly in the Central Valley. We don't know if local populations are extinct or have dropped to low levels that we're unlikely to detect,'' he said.

Shapiro, an entomologist and professor of evolution and ecology, monitors...Read On

For four decades, C. Bernard Fowler has been the Patuxent River's preacher and protector. From beginning to end, the river has run through his life, shaping it with its current. It fed his family when he was a child. It gave him steady work as an adult, renting out boats and selling crab cakes. It brought him the woman who would become his wife.

So, when he realized wastewater was destroying the river he loved, he began to fight, first in court, then in the state capital. He told his story to anyone who would listen -- how as a young man wading for crabs, he could walk chest-high in the river and still see his feet. (Bernie Fowler shows the depth of water at a wade-in)

Later as a Democratic state senator, he would wade into its increasingly cloudy waters again and vow to... Read On

A small worm dangling from her beak, the bird crawls through the portal to feed her brood, paying no mind to the heavy dump trucks growling past.(Eastern Bluebird near quarry by Lynda Richardson)

Industrial sites aren't the usual place for wildlife, but an environmental advocacy group has recognized Vulcan Materials Co.'s Lenoir Quarry for its efforts to preserve nature on the property.

The North Carolina Wildlife Federation has designated the 300-acre quarry as one of 20 "Wildlife and Industry Together," or WAIT, sites in North Carolina. The WAIT program is intended to foster wildlife restoration and protection.

Tom Carroll, business development manager for Vulcan, said the Birmingham, AL-based construction- materials firm has long been interested in preserving wildlife and has... Read On

For more nature photographs, see
the Gallery on WindStar's web site
and Nature's Best Photographs Album in the American Wildlife Blog.

So what exactly happened to the giant of the northern woods? Unfortunately, in the 1800s, a new fungus was quietly introduced to the Northeast from imported chestnut trees from Asia. Unlike its Asian counterparts, the American Chestnut had little resistance to the relentless pathogen that we now call the “Chestnut Blight”. (American Chestnut by Barry Merluzzo)

The bark shattering blight infected trees across the nation and by the 1950s; the trees were... Read On

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