Oct 12 2014

Meet the Tiny Desert Slime that Holds our Topsoil Together. For Now.

By Lyndal Cairns

If your eyes were microscopes and you had really good sunblock, you could lie down in the Arizona Desert and watch tiny microbes build colonies of millions around you. These greeblies, called cyanobacteria, colonize the very top layer of soil and need little more than sunshine to survive. In their wake, they leave a trail…

Mar 26 2014

Rewilding: On the trail of Yellowstone’s wolves

By Lyndal Cairns

I had hoped, but didn’t expect, to see wolves in Yellowstone. Ever since I was a young lass, they held a certain fascination for me. There is a dangerous grace; a beauty even, about wolves – something fundamentally wild. So on my first trip to the US two years ago, I stumped up the cash…