Fur/feather/fin quick hits: Red knots gain from crab-harvest ban; overfishing hurts sharks; rabbits eat gardens and trees

Red knots are shorebirds that like to eat crabs and shrimp.
(Joe Austin Photography, Alamy, via The New York Times)

"Red knots are plump, neatly proportioned sandpipers that in summer sport brilliant terracotta-orange underparts and intricate gold, buff, rufous, and black upperparts," Cornell  University's bird lab says. The species took a population nosedive, but seems to be recovering, reports Jon Hurdle of The New York Times: "The count, by land and boat, tallied about 22,000 of the robin-sized birds, an encouraging sign for a shorebird that is listed as federally threatened . . . a sharp increase from a record low of 6,880 in 2021. . . . Crab harvesting bans were partly credited for the rise."

A tiger shark is a type of reef shark.
(Photo by Gerald Schömbs, Unsplashed)

"Sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years, appearing in the fossil record before trees even existed," reports Josh Davis for The Natural History Museum in London. They even survived five mass extinctions, but may not survive the Anthropocene Epoch. Dino Grandoni of The Washington Post reports, "A massive new survey of nearly 400 coral reefs around the world reveals sharks once common in those waters are vanishing, a troubling sign that the fearsome fish are at a much greater risk of going extinct than previously thought. . . . The ocean, simply put, isn't as healthy without sharks. . . . The culprit behind the declines, the researchers say, is rampant overfishing."

Seaweed may be a climate-saving game-changer, reports Bridget Huber of National Geographic. "A bold experiment to use seaweed as part of a solution to climate change is underway in Iceland, where millions of small buoys made of wood and limestone, some bearing seaweed, will be dropped into the ocean in the coming months. . . . [A system will] sink the buoys, festooned with long locks of seaweed, to the deep ocean floor, where the carbon they contain will remain sequestered for 800 years or more."

Photo by John Tlumacki, The Boston Globe

Gardeners and tree lovers, beware of bunnies. In Boston, they are nibbling down flowers and mowing through veggie rows, reports Alex Koller for The Boston Globe: Massachusetts bunnies "have an appetite for the entire menu: from beans and lettuce to kale and cabbage. Even onions." Mary Lahr Schier, a Minnesota gardener, noted their area's bunnies spent the winter munching on trees and bushes, and now some people wonder if their "tree can be saved?" She gives some helpful "rabbit prevention" advice for all.

 

Container gardens grow neatly on trellises.
(Photo by Vaivirga via Lancaster Farming)

Sometimes there isn't space or the time for a full garden. Container gardening can help. "As long as you have a big enough container and a sunny spot, it's possible to grow almost any vegetable," writes Therese Ciesinski of Lancaster Farming. "Between the hundreds of regular-sized varieties and the growing number of dwarf offerings, you'll have more choices than you have pots." It might be mid-June, but considering starter plants are often available, there's still time to plant in many regions of the U.S. And thne there are fall crops!

Don't have time for a garden this year? Try this site to plan next year's garden.

Another wonderful fresh food option is visiting a local farmers' market.