Bison Beneficial to USA Grasslands
Bison aren’t simply grazing as they move across the meadows of Yellowstone National Park. They are engineering the environment, manipulating the forage on the landscape and changing the way spring green-up occurs, researchers recently found, essentially rolling back spring as the migrate through the high country.
Their presence makes for longer, greener plant life in the spring, they found, and more nutritious grasses.
When bison head to the high country in the summer, researchers found, they graze so intensively that the grasses revert to an earlier stage of growth, essentially returning springtime conditions.
They found that areas where bison grazed heavily were more productive than areas where they kept bison out. Even NASA satellites can detect the difference between areas that are lightly grazed and heavily grazed.
Baby Pangolin Rescued
A rescued young Sunda pangolin takes his first tentative steps after being released back into the wild in Thailand. The Critically Endangered animal was being illegally kept in cramped conditions and constant darkness by a poacher, before being saved by local park rangers.
Believed to have been snatched at night by poachers searching for pangolins to sell, experts think he kept alive as the meat and scales of live pangolins reach a higher price on the black market than those of dead animals.
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