Christine Peterson

Jan 12, 2025 | blog.nature.org | Christine Peterson |Justine E Hausheer |Matthew Miller |Natalie van Hoose

Kudzu, a climbing plant that strangles trees, arrived on the shores of the southern U.S. from China and Japan, brought here as a . Instead it took over, quickly spreading from east Texas to Illinois, Florida to New York. Make a lasting impact for nature when you join The Nature Conservancy But as the vine reached the more northern portions of its range, places like Connecticut and New Jersey, it seemed to stall.

Dec 20, 2024 | blog.nature.org | Christine Peterson |Cara Byington |Matthew Miller

About 20,000 years ago, somewhere along the crease where the Cascade Mountains drop into the plains, black-tailed jackrabbits and snowshoe hares mated. But as snowshoe hares, with their unique ability to seasonally change from brown to white, bounded away, they took with them a black-tailed jackrabbit gene, one that would serve them well millennia later: the black-tailed jackrabbit ability to stay brown all winter. Help protect threatened lands and waters around the globe.

Sep 22, 2024 | blog.nature.org | Christine Peterson |Justine E Hausheer |Dustin Solberg |Lisa Marie Ballard

Sprinkled throughout every county in one of the country’s most densely populated states, lives more than 3,000 furry, lumbering omnivores. Even in New Jersey, black bears have learned to coexist, more or less, with humans. Their adaptability has made them one of the world’s most abundant bear species, and also the one faring the best in an increasingly human-dominated landscape.

Sep 19, 2024 | blog.nature.org | Cara Byington |Christine Peterson |Roshni Arora

Yes, you read that right. In the forests of Chile’s Valdivian Coastal Reserve, there is a small mammal known, in English, as the “long-nosed Chilean shrew opossum.” In Spanish, it’s comadrejita trompuda, and to scientists, it’s Rhyncholestes raphanarus. In all languages, this fascinating relict marsupial is the last of its kind—the only known living member of the Rhyncholestes genus of shrew opossum remaining on Earth.

Aug 11, 2024 | blog.nature.org | Matthew Miller |Justine E Hausheer |Christine Peterson

The striped skunk is one of the most familiar mammals of North America, instantly recognizable by sight or smell. But there are nine other species of skunks, and arguably the cutest of the bunch is the spotted skunks. There are three very similar species of spotted skunk that live over a wide range of the United States and Mexico. And yet very few people ever see them. They are quite small – about a quarter of the size of a striped skunk – and prefer denser vegetation.