News

This short video on The Weather Channel encourages visitors to the website to participate in the monarch tagging program of Monarch Watch and provides contact info. It follows an interview with Chip Taylor, Monarch Watch founding director.

North American oak-hickory canopies are powerhouses for feeding wildlife. Without periodic understory fires, they wane.

Monarch Watch, an international program at the University of Kansas dedicated to the conservation and study of monarch butterflies, has a new director. Kristen Baum, well known for her work on monarchs and pollinators, began this week as director of Monarch Watch and as a senior scientist at the…

States like North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana will have to deal with toxic blue-green algae blooms already common in Kansas. Utility companies will have to act fast to treat drinking water and keep it safe. The ugly blue-green algae that frequently spoil Kansas lakes for swimming,…

How do monarchs find their way to Mexico, and what effect does weather have? Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch answers those questions and more.

Environmental and health regulators in Kansas routinely notify the public when lake concentrations of blue-green algae surged to levels that people and pets should avoid drinking or swimming in the water. Warning advisories are in place for Lake Afton in Sedgwick County, Fossil Lake in Russell…

A broad analysis of lake water quality across the United States reveals human-driven climate change is increasing risks of high toxin concentrations from algal blooms in U.S. lakes, posing increasing hazards to people and wild and domestic animals, including dogs.

The University of Kansas Field Station has scheduled a prescribed burn of part of the Rice Woodland tract of the Baldwin Woods Forest Preserve for the week of October 23–27.

The annual monarch butterfly migration is well underway. The insects are due to arrive in Mexico just in time for the Day of the Dead in early November. For decades, scientists with the nonprofit group Monarch Watch have relied on thousands of volunteers to try and figure out the mysteries behind…

About 10 barrels of oil and 1,500 barrels of industrial salt water spilled from an oil pipeline into a creek near the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge in central Kansas earlier this month. Rattlesnake Creek runs through the refuge, an important migratory stop for birds. The spill happened outside…