In the end, the military campaign was called Operation Ranch Hand, but it originally went by a more appropriately hellish appellation: Operation Hades. As part of this Vietnam War effort, from 1961 to 1971, the United States sprayed over 73 million liters of chemical agents on the country to strip away the vegetation that provided cover for Vietcong troops in “enemy territory.”

Using a variety of defoliants, the U.S. military also intentionally targeted cultivated land, destroying crops and disrupting rice production and distribution by the largely communist National Liberation Front, a party devoted to reunification of North and South Vietnam.

In a study that shows the importance of climate change on critical pollinators, North Carolina State University researchers found that earlier and longer flowering seasons can have poor effects on the bumble bees that rely on these flowers to live and thrive.

“We wanted to understand how climate change is affecting bee populations – specifically three species of bumble bees that live at higher altitudes and are important pollinators,” said Rebecca Irwin, an NC State professor of applied ecology and co-principal investigator on the study, which is published in the journal Ecology Letters. “We asked whether variation in snowmelt timing and summer precipitation directly affected bumble bee colonies and their survival, or if the snowmelt and precipitation effects on flowers were more important. It turns out that the effects on flowers played a more critical role in affecting bee populations.”

Aerial view of a small lake near the city of Clear Lake, Iowa, which represents typical landscapes surrounding the lakes in this study. About 92 percent of land within Iowa is in production agriculture and crops on these lands receive large amendments of nitrogen as anhydrous ammonia and phosphorus. Excessive algae growth caused by these nutrient inputs have turned many of the lakes in this region bright green. Surprisingly, a number of lakes in this study were clearer and appeared bluer than expected, yet are far from healthy. The study authors hypothesize that very high nitrogen levels, often >10 mg/L, suppress high chlorophyll (algae) concentrations.

Looks can be deceiving.

Look at a hundred lakes in the agricultural heartland of the United States and you will likely see green lakes surrounded by green fields. The nitrogen and phosphorus in agricultural fertilizers that help crops grow also fuel the growth of algae and cyanobacteria that in excess can turn lakes the color of pea soup.

Rewilding and restoration of land often rely on the reintroduction of species. But what happens when what you want to reintroduce no longer exists? What if the animal in question is not only locally extinct, but gone for good?

Yes, this might sound like the plot of Jurassic Park. But in real life this is actually happening in the case of the Aurochs (Bos primigenius). This wild ancestor of all modern cattle has not been seen since the last individual died in 1627, in today’s Poland.

Can a forest be fascist? This may seem a facetious question, but it is one that Italians have been discussing of late due to a fire that occurred at the end of August.

The fire, allegedly started accidently by someone cooking tomato sauce, burned down part of a historic and controversial forest on the slopes of Mount Giano, about 100km north-east of Rome. The 20,000 fir trees here, spread over eight hectares, were planted between 1938 and 1939 by recruits studying at the academy of the forestry corps in the small town of Cittaducale. They were a homage to Mussolini: planted in such a way so that from afar, they read DUX, the fascist leader’s title in Latin. And some want to replant it.

Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico. With sustained winds of 155 miles per hour, much of the US territory has been without power for weeks. Many residents lack running water, hospitals have been limping along on backup generators, and the island’s agriculture has been essentially flattened. The toll on local wildlife remains far from appreciated, but it’s clear from Maria and other hurricanes that some animal populations suffer from big storms—while others thrive.

A quartet of female dolphins—Andrea, Fathom, Katrina, and Splash—will use its sea mine-finding skills to hunt down endangered vaquita porpoises in the Gulf of California. The goal is to herd the last of the devastated population of vaquitas into a protected pen. The mammals are frequent victims of illegal fishing.

“The idea is to keep these vaquitas we capture in a safe, restricted space so that we can look at how to reproduce them and eventually recover the population, and eventually release them,” Mexican Environment Secretary Rafael Pacchiano tells the Associated Press.

In a paper published October 18 in the journal Nature, a group of ecologists and evolutionary biologists from five universities has attempted to understand how species coevolve within large webs of mutualistic species. The study yielded surprising findings about the relative importance of direct and indirect effects within such networks.

A study that used DNA tests to analyse the scats of one of the world’s most numerous albatrosses has revealed surprising results about the top predator’s diet.

DNA analysis of 1460 scats from breeding sites around the Southern Ocean has shown that the diet of black-browed albatrosses contains a much higher proportion of jellyfish than previously thought.

Sampling from 63 protected nature areas throughout Germany, researchers have found a drop in flying insect mass by about 76 percent over 27 years. The results, published today (October 18) in PLOS ONE, are drastic, but are consistent with prior studies of butterflies, wild bees, and other surveys of specific insect species.

“The amount of decline, about 75 percent, is way too much to be attributed to just one or a few species such as bees or butterflies,” says plant ecologist and study author Hans de Kroon of Radboud University in the Netherlands. “These results are not from agricultural areas but natural preserves that are well-maintained and meant to protect biodiversity. We are seeing insects slipping out of our hands.”