It's International Polar Bear Day! Since it's 2025, I've rounded up 25 cool facts about these icons of the Arctic, including a surprising discovery I helped make during in my former life as a wildlife geneticist. Is your favourite ... Read More  

Today's Cabinet of Curiosities is in honour of World Wetlands Day. I did a lot of research on wetlands for The Boreal Forest, much of which simply would not fit in the book. Here are some favourite facts about ... Read More  

Take a deep breath in. Now hold it. You probably know that you have the trees to thank for that breath you just took. Trees and other plants provide the oxygen that makes Earth habitable. But they don’t work alone! The ... Read More  

One reason Antarctica is so unique is because it's been isolated from the rest of the planet for about 20 million years: ever since the Antarctic Circumpolar Current formed. The ACC - you guessed it - is an ocean ... Read More  

Four more sleeps until Polar: Wildlife at the Ends of the Earth lands in a bookstore near you! During preliminary research for the book, when I was trying to figure out which adaptations I would cover and which animal ... Read More  

Despite the giant window in my office, the room was unbearably dark. Aging eyes feeling the strain, I replaced the light fixture with a brighter one. That helped, sort of. But on cloudy days, it was still a dim ... Read More  

It's International Polar Bear Day! Since it's 2023, I've rounded up 23 cool facts about these icons of the Arctic, including a surprising discovery I helped make during in my former life as a wildlife geneticist. Is your favourite ... Read More  

Did you have a dinosaur phase when you were a kid? I did. I was in the second grade, and I was obsessed. I pored over library books, memorizing five-syllable names and amazing the adults with my stockpile of ... Read More  

If you're anything like me, media coverage of climate change has given you the following impressions: Dependence on fossil fuels is the main reason for climate change. Individuals bear ultimate responsibility for climate change, because we make choices that are bad ... Read More  

When I was writing The Boreal Forest, one of my goals was to shine some light on ecological processes - by showing how a forest works, I could hopefully show what a forest is for... by which I mean, ... Read More  

It's a grey, rainy Friday and I'm seriously tempted to go back to bed until spring shows up. I'm also feeling very grateful that I live in an area that is not seriously affected by flooding, and a great ... Read More