Overnight News Digest: Flowers bloom up to 92 days earlier than 35 years ago!

February on course to break unprecedented number of heat records

The Guardian

February is on course to break a record number of heat records, meteorologists say, as human-made global heating and the natural El Niño climate pattern drive up temperatures on land and oceans around the world.

A little over halfway into the shortest month of the year, the heating spike has become so pronounced that climate charts are entering new territory, particularly for sea-surface temperatures that have persisted and accelerated to the point where expert observers are struggling to explain how the change is happening.

“The planet is warming at an accelerating rate. We are seeing rapid temperature increases in the ocean, the climate’s largest reservoir of heat,” said Dr Joel Hirschi, the associate head of marine systems modelling at the UK National Oceanography Centre. “The amplitude by which previous sea surface temperatures records were beaten in 2023 and now 2024 exceed expectations, though understanding why this is, is the subject of ongoing research.”

Flowers are blooming up to 92 days earlier due to climate change

Earth.com

New research aimed to observe the changes in the blooming patterns of flowers and 51 species of shrubs, bushes, and trees over the past 35 years, providing insights into how plant communities are adapting to climate shifts in the southern Iberian Peninsula.

Researchers from the University of Seville have conducted a significant study to explore the effects of climate change on the flora of Doñana National Park. […]

Remarkably, rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) exemplifies this shift, flowering 92 days earlier than in the past. […]

This uneven shift in flowering times has resulted in prolonged blooming periods for many species, leading to an “overcrowded” floral neighborhood.

This crowding could intensify competition for the attention of pollinating insects, as 55% of the species now find themselves in a more congested flowering environment.

Climate change is undoing decades of progress on air quality

Grist

A choking layer of pollution-laced fog settled over Minneapolis last month, blanketing the city in its worst air quality since 2005. A temperature inversion acted like a ceiling, trapping small particles emitted from sluggish engines and overworked heaters in a gauze that shrouded the skyline. That haze arrived amid the hottest winter on record for the Midwest. Warmer temperatures melted what little snow had fallen, releasing moisture that helped further trap pollution.

Though summertime pollution from wildfire smoke and ozone receives more attention, climate change is making these kinds of winter inversions increasingly common— with troubling results. One in 4 Americans are now exposed to unhealthy air, according to a report by First Street Foundation.

Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at the nonprofit climate research firm, calls this increase in air pollution a “climate penalty,” rolling back improvements made over four decades. On the West Coast, this inflection point was passed about 10 years ago; air quality across the region has consistently worsened since 2010.

'Zombie Fires' burning at an alarming rate in Canada

BBC News

Even in the dead of Canada's winter, the embers of last year's record-setting wildfire season remain. So-called zombie fires are burning under thick layers of snow at an unprecedented rate, raising fears about what the coming summer may bring. […]

Sonja Leverkus, a firefighter and scientist who is local to [Fort Nelson, British Columbia], recalled driving during a snowstorm in November, but the snowfall didn't look white. Rather, she said, it was blueish-grey because of the smoke in the air.

"I've never experienced a snowstorm that smelled like smoke," said Ms Leverkus, who has lived in northern BC for more than 15 years.

Alberta moves up start date for wildfire season, fire season now underway

CTV News — Edmonton

Alberta is declaring an early start to the 2024 wildfire season.

The legislated wildfire season runs March 1 to Oct. 31, but Todd Loewen, minister of forestry and parks, announced Tuesday the fire season is now underway as a result of warmer-than-normal temperatures and below-average precipitation.

"I know Albertans are feeling uneasy about the risks posed to their homes, communities and daily lives. I understand these concerns and I share them as someone whose home was near the forest and was threatened by wildfire in 2023," he told reporters. "So as of today, a permit is required for any burning plan in the forest protection area."

There are currently 54 wildfires burning in Alberta, 52 of those fires started in 2023.

'More unzipping of the landscape': Arctic permafrost could crumble into rivers, unleashing devastating feedback loop

Live Science

Permafrost isn't just a feature of Arctic landscapes — it actually shapes those landscapes by directing the flow of water. And as global temperatures increase, this permanently frozen ground could give way to create new rivers and expand existing ones, which would release huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, potentially resulting in a devastating feedback loop, scientists have said.

In a new study, published Feb. 1 in the journal PNAS, scientists investigated what role permafrost plays in Arctic watersheds — the area of land that channels water, such as rain and snowmelt, into creeks, streams and rivers, and eventually out to reservoirs and oceans.

After analyzing data from over 69,000 watersheds across the Northern Hemisphere, researchers discovered the hard surface of permafrost prevents water from carving channels — as it would in warmer landscapes — resulting in fewer and smaller rivers in the region.

Ice coverage nearly nonexistent across the Great Lakes, as the historical peak approaches

NOAA

Great Lakes ice coverage was record low to start January in large part due to well-above average warmth across the region in December, paired with the lack of any major Arctic air blasts. In early January, we discussed how volatile winter ice cover on the lakes can be and that early season record-lows do not necessarily signal record-low maximum extents later in the season. While this remains true, ice formation across the lakes did not pick up in January, and it has been nearly nonexistent as far as mid-February normals go. […]

Following the record-low ice cover to start the year, a mid-January Arctic blast brought record-cold temperatures to portions of the country. These cold temperatures allowed ice coverage to expand from near-zero to just over 16 percent across the lakes on January 22, 2024—the current seasonal maximum.

Since then, ice coverage has steadily fallen into never-before-recorded levels for mid-February. Daily record-low ice cover has persisted across the Great Lakes since February 8, 2024, and this week dropped to under 3 percent. As of February 15, 2024, Lake Erie is completely ice free and Lake Ontario has less than 1 percent ice coverage.

More frequent extreme droughts result in significant crop losses

Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research

Climate change has resulted in increasingly extreme weather events worldwide. NIBIO research scientist Pål Thorvaldsen is among the many scientists who participated in a large international drought experiment initiated by the University of Michigan, USA. He explains that climate change may lead to more frequent occurrences of short-term extreme drought.

“Previously, short-term extreme droughts could occur every 100 years. According to some climate scenarios, we can expect them to happen every five to ten years in the future,” the researcher says.

The scientists examined grass- and shrub-dominated ecosystems – both vital grazing areas for livestock. The results show that plant growth was reduced by a whopping 60% during short-term extreme drought in grasslands, compared to areas with moderate drought.

As the Number of American Farms and Farmers Declines, Agriculture Secretary Urges Climate Action to Reverse the Trend

Inside Climate News

On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack helped unveil his agency’s Census of Agriculture, a huge quinquennial report that covers 6 million data points and gives the current state-of-the-state of American farms and farmers.

In a presentation at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Vilsack underscored his main takeaway: The number of American farms and farmers continues to decline, a fact that has broad consequences, he argued, beyond farming itself. […]

One way to reverse the trend, he said, is to boost support for agricultural methods and practices that have climate benefits so farmers can earn money for them.

“It’s important for us to invest in climate-smart agriculture,” Vilsack said, “because that creates an opportunity for farmers to qualify, potentially, for ecosystem service market credits, which is cash coming into the farm for environmental results that can only occur on the farm. The farm then creates a second source of income.”

Erratic weather fueled by climate change will worsen locust outbreaks, study finds

Africanews with AP

Extreme wind and rain may lead to bigger and worse desert locust outbreaks, with human-caused climate change likely to intensify the weather patterns and cause higher outbreak risks, a new study has found.

The desert locust — a short-horned species found in some dry areas of northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia — is a migratory insect that travels in swarms of millions over long distances and damages crops, causing famine and food insecurity.

A square kilometer swarm comprises 80 million locusts that can in one day consume food crops enough to feed 35,000 people. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization describes it as "the most destructive migratory pest in the world."

The study, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, said these outbreaks will be "increasingly hard to prevent and control" in a warming climate.

Africa’s ice is disappearing

Friedrich Alexander Universität — Erlangen Nürnberg

The few glaciers in Africa have long since become an important indicator of how rapidly and severely climate change is changing our planet. The ice on the high summits of the continent is rapidly disappearing, Africa may lose its white peaks by the middle of our century. The Master’s student Anne Hinzmann and her supervisors Prof. Dr. Thomas Mölg and Prof. Dr. Matthias Braun at the Institute of Geography at FAU together with the universities in Otago in New Zealand, Massachusetts in the USA and Innsbruck in Austria have published their findings showing how quickly glaciers there are shrinking in the journal Environmental Research: the ice fields in Africa have more than halved since the beginning of the 21st century. […]

The changes in precipitation in the region play an important role. There are not only fewer rain clouds, there are also more days with no clouds at all, thereby exposing the glaciers to more sunshine. Even if the temperatures remain below zero, the sun can change the ice directly into water vapor and humidity, gnawing away at the glacier as a result. This does not happen evenly. In dips there is less sun and the ice remains longer in such protected positions. It is similar for glaciers on western slopes, which may be exposed to a lot of sun in the afternoons, but are more often covered by cloud than other areas. They are exposed to less energy from the sun and the ice is attacked more slowly. Apart from such cases, the few ice fields in the tropics show particularly clearly just how fast climate change is already progressing today.

Plastics Are Fossil Fuel Industry’s Plan B. Fenceline Communities Pay the Price.

truthout

Scientists are increasingly alarmed over the soaring amounts of microplastics (small pieces of plastic less than five millimeters) and nanoplastics (extremely small, sub-micrometer plastic particles) being discovered throughout our planet, our bodies and our food. Just this past January, new studies found huge numbers of plastic particles in bottled water and microplastics in nearly 90 percent of sampled proteins like beef and tofu. These reports follow many others that have found microplastics and nanoplastics in nearly every crevice of our world: clouds and rivers, Arctic sea ice and sea mammals, heart tissue and breast milk and even placentas.

With global plastics waste on pace to nearly triple by 2060, the problem is only set to worsen. The proliferation of microplastics is an outgrowth of the larger perils associated with plastics production. Plastic contains many toxic chemicals, and plastic waste saturates our land and oceans. According to a 2022 OECD report, only 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled, with most of it “ending up in landfill, incinerated or leaking into the environment.”

Major corporations, from chemical companies to consumer brands, have a vested interest in perpetuating plastics production. Powerful industry organizations spend millions every year lobbying to expand plastics production and kill regulatory efforts to limit harms tied to plastics.

Report: Plastics, Oil Industry Deceived Public on Recycling Use for More Than 50 Years

DeSmog

An explosive new report finds that the plastics industry has misled the public for decades about the viability of recycling plastic, promoting reuse despite the fact that mechanical recycling was not feasible – perpetuating the plastic waste crisis the world faces today.

“The plastics industry has ‘sold’ plastic recycling to the American public to sell plastic,” according to the report by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a nonprofit organization that advocates for legal action to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. In a statement, CCI claims the study, called “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis,” includes “evidence that could provide the foundation for legal efforts to hold fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies accountable for their lies and deception.”

Petrochemical companies and the plastics industry have known of the technical and economic limitations that make plastics unrecyclable for more than half a century, and “have failed to overcome them,” the report states. “Despite this knowledge, the plastics industry has continued to increase plastic production, while carrying out a well-coordinated campaign to deceive consumers, policymakers, and regulators about plastic recycling.”

Gulf corals still suffering more than a decade after Deepwater Horizon oil spill

American Geophysical Union

Deep-water corals in the Gulf of Mexico are still struggling to recover from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, scientists report at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans. Comparing images of more than 300 corals over 13 years — the longest time series of deep-sea corals to date — reveals that in some areas, coral health continues to decline to this day.

The spill slathered hundreds of miles of shoreline in oil, and a slick the size of Virginia coated the ocean surface. Over 87 days, 134 million gallons of oil spilled directly from the wellhead at a depth of 1520 meters (nearly 5000 feet) into the Gulf. While the spill was most visible at the surface, negative ecological impacts extended hundreds of meters into the ocean.

In a presentation on Tuesday, 20 February, scientists will show that deep-water corals remain damaged long after the spill. Over 13 years, these coral communities have had limited recovery — some even continuing to decline.7

The False Promise of Carbon Capture as a Climate Solution

Scientific American

Fossil-fuel companies use captured carbon dioxide to extract more fossil fuels, leading to a net increase in atmospheric CO2. […]

The problem, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Charles Harvey and entrepreneur Kurt House have explained, is that nearly all CCS [carbon capture and storage] projects in the U.S. are actually enhanced-recovery projects that keep the oil and gas flowing, and every new barrel of oil and cubic foot of gas sold and burned is putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. So not only do these kinds of projects not help, but they perpetuate our use of fossil fuels at a critical moment in history when we need to do the opposite. […]

Carbon capture and storage as a solution to the climate crisis… might be part of the solution down the road, right now it's mostly a dangerous distraction. Our focus—and our tax dollars—should be trained on scaling up production of cost-competitive renewable energy, grid-scale batteries for storing that energy and efficiency measures to conserve it as fast as we possibly can.

How the housing industry is working to stop energy efficient homes

The Washington Post

[…] Across the country, the home builder lobby is mobilizing its 140,000 members against state and local efforts to save energy and ease the transition to cleaner technologies, such as wiring homes to support electric car charging. Since poorly designed and insulated buildings tend to leak and waste energy — one reason homes account for nearly one-fifth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions— climate advocates say the home builders’ repeated victories will have a lasting impact, locking in practices that could hurt consumers and the planet for decades.

There’s no debate that boosting the energy efficiency of new homes often increases upfront costs, but the builders appear to be inflating the numbers. A federal study found that North Carolina’s proposed code update would have added at most about $6,500 to the price of a newly built home, not $20,400. According to the analysis, these changes would have paid for themselves through lower power bills and, during the first year alone, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of taking 29,000 cars off the road. […]

The home builders’ effectiveness at stopping code changes has left some states with standards that are 15 years old. While parts of the Northeast, California and Illinois have strong building codes, there is less new construction in these states. The Biden administration has tried to entice others to bring their standards up to date by dangling millions of dollars in funding.

US regulator drops some emissions disclosure requirements from draft climate rules

Reuters

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has removed some of its most ambitious greenhouse gas emission disclosure requirements from corporate climate risk rules it is preparing to adopt, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The SEC has dropped a requirement for U.S.-listed companies to disclose so-called Scope 3 emissions, which was included in its original draft of the rules published in March 2022, the sources said.

Scaling back these rules would be a blow for President Joe Biden's agenda to address climate change threats through federal agencies…

Scope 3 emissions account for greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, released in the atmosphere from a company's supply chain and the consumption of its products by customers. For most businesses, Scope 3 emissions represent more than 70% of their carbon footprint, according to consulting firm Deloitte.

If adopted, the new draft would represent a win for many corporations and their trade groups that lobbied to water down the rules.

White House to weaken climate-fighting fuel efficiency targets for 2030

Ars Technica

It appears as if ambitious new fuel efficiency regulations that would require Americans to adopt many more electric vehicles are to be watered down. Last year, President Biden's administration published proposed new Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations for 2027–2030, regulations that would require automakers to sell four times as many zero-emissions vehicles as they do now.

But opposition to the new CAFE standards has been fierce, and now Reuters reports that the White House is backing down and will issue new guidelines with less ambitious goals in the coming weeks.

The White House's goal had been for US EV adoption to reach 50 percent of all new light vehicle sales by 2030, rising to 60 percent by 2032. In part, it proposed changing the modifier applied to each new zero-emissions vehicle when used to calculate an automaker's fleet emissions.

China at risk of missing its goals unless it takes drastic action to rein in coal expansion, new research finds

South China Morning Post

China is at heightened risk of missing its climate targets and suffering major economic losses unless it takes decisive actions to put a halt to runaway coal power plant expansion and reform outdated power grid management, new research has found.

To fix challenges posed by an unchecked boom in construction of coal power plants initiated in the name of preventing periodic power shortages, Beijing must scrap policies that support coal power generation, according to climate analysts.

“Another year of rapidly rising emissions in 2023 leaves China way off track against its target of cutting carbon intensity by 18 per cent between 2021 and 2025,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). “As a result, carbon dioxide emissions would now need to fall by 4 to 6 per cent by 2025 to hit the goal.”

A Second Trump Presidency Would Be a Nightmare for the Climate

Bloomberg

A second Donald Trump presidency would be a nightmare for Earth’s climate (among other things). […]

President Joe Biden has… driven significant investments in the green-energy transition, starting with the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act’s nominal $370 billion in climate spending. He has limited oil exploration in the Alaskan wilderness and effectively frozen new LNG export terminals. All told, he has taken climate more seriously than any predecessor since Jimmy “Solar Panels on the White House” Carter.

Trump could quickly, and with gusto, wreck much of that progress. […]

Regulations are much harder to undo than executive orders, and the Biden administration is trying to finalize climate rules in time to avoid a congressional review if Republicans sweep the board. […]

But Trump might get another four years to pack the federal courts with judges sympathetic to his wrecking-ball approach to the climate. And the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority might soon deliver another helping hand in the form of  overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine, which gives agencies some latitude to interpret regulatory law.

Supreme Court will hear challenge to EPA's 'good neighbor' rule that limits pollution

NPR News

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in an important environmental case that centers on the obligation to be a "good neighbor."

Lawyers representing three states, companies and industry groups will ask the justices to block a federal rule that's intended to limit ozone air pollution. Experts said it's only the third time in more than 50 years that the court has scheduled arguments on an emergency application like this one.

At the heart of the dispute is the part of the Clean Air Act known as the "good neighbor" provision. It's designed to help protect people from severe health problems they face because of pollution that floats downwind from neighboring states.

"Air pollution doesn't respect state borders," said Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus.

Disasters Forced 2.5 Million Americans From Their Homes Last Year

The New York Times

An estimated 2.5 million people were forced from their homes in the United States by weather-related disasters in 2023, according to new data from the Census Bureau.

The numbers, issued on Thursday, paint a more complete picture than ever before of the lives of these people in the aftermath of disasters. More than a third said they had experienced at least some food shortage in the first month after being displaced. More than half reported that they had interacted with someone who seemed to be trying to defraud them. And more than a third said they had been displaced for longer than a month.

The United States experienced 28 disasters last year that each cost at least $1 billion. But until recently, the number of Americans displaced by those disasters has been hard to estimate because of the nation’s patchwork response system.

Understanding the human toll of disasters, not just the financial costs, is increasingly urgent as climate change supercharges extreme weather, experts say.

Confessions of a Canadian climate refugee

Canada’s National Observer

When people hear the term "climate refugee," most think of huddled masses from impoverished countries driven from their homes by drought and famine. But there are also climate refugees in wealthy countries like Canada. I know because I’m one of them.

Before I left my home in the beautiful Okanagan Valley, we lived on a mountain ridge above the city of Kelowna, across the street from a large regional park full of hiking trails and wildlife, and up the hill from some of Canada’s best wineries. Our lives were filled with outdoor activities, kayaking in mountain lakes, touring the many celebrated wineries, and heading out the front door every morning to walk our dog in Rose Valley Regional Park. But even then, I knew our life in the Okanagan was under threat.

Until 2008, I was the bureau reporter at CBC News in Kelowna and, among other things, I was the lead reporter on the "Summer of Fire" in 2003 that destroyed hundreds of homes in Kelowna and the Thompson Valley around Barriere. The experience, quite literally, is burned into my memory.

What Will It Take for the EPA to Ban a Pesticide Linked to Parkinson’s?

The New Republic

[…] The Environmental Protection Agency recently reapprovedparaquat, a toxic herbicide, even though a group of environmental and publichealth groups have been suing the agency for ignoring multiplestudies showing paraquat exposure increases a person’s odds of developing Parkinson’sdisease. That’s in addition to paraquat’s short-term effects, which can includeheart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, and lung scarring if even a smallamount of it is ingested, accordingto the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the CDC fact sheet on paraquat includes the strikingrecommendation that if you get any on your clothes you should cut the affectedgarment off your body—because it is too dangerous to pull it over your head andrisk ingesting paraquat—and see a doctor immediately. The company that sells paraquat, according todocuments leaked to TheGuardian in 2022, has known about possiblelong-term neurological effects since 1975 and deliberately downplayed them. […]

As Richard Nixonenvisioned it, studying and regulating the impact of toxic chemicals on theenvironment was one of the new agency’s major tasks. Then, in 1972, Congressgreatly strengthened the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, creating a much stricter regulatory framework for the EPA to follow.

Over the last half-century, however, industry has grown evermore adept at creating and widening loopholes in that framework. The EPA also doesn’tmake full use of its power. For example, despite having enormous authority toprotect endangered species, the agency has neverstudied the impact of a pesticide on an endangered animal or plants priorto approving its use. When other organizations and government agencies havestudied the effect of pesticides on biodiversity, they’ve concluded that theharm is staggering; a 2017 U.S. Fish and Wildlife study found that just twowidely used pesticides alone posed an existential threat to some 1,300 species.

Carbon emissions from the destruction of mangrove forests predicted to increase by 50,000% by the end of the century

IOP Publishing

The annual rate of carbon emissions due to the degradation of carbon stocks in mangrove forests is predicted to rise by nearly 50,000% by the end of the century, according to a new study published in … Environmental Research Letters. Mangroves in regions such as southern India, southeastern China, Singapore and eastern Australia are particularly affected.  

Mangrove forests store a large amount of carbon, particularly in their soils, however human development in these areas has led to the degradation of these carbon stocks. Over the past 20 years, a substantial number of mangrove forests have been replaced by agriculture, aquaculture and urban land management, leading global mangrove carbon stocks to decline by 158.4 million tonnes – releasing the same level of carbon emissions as flying the entire US population from New York to London.

“We rewilded our yard DIY style – and got the neighbours on board too”

Rewilding

My wife Won-ok and I bought our dream house in 2021 with a vision of putting our environmental ethics into action: Grab the outdated notion of maintaining a green grass lawn and yank it out by its roots. It was time to rewild. […]

We gave a polite no-thanks to a landscape architect who quoted us $6,000 USD just to design our new urban oasis – not to do any actual labour. Do-it-yourself route, here we come! Won-ok and I aren’t ecologists, but we’re eager learners and fierce workers, middle age be damned. […]

Little did we know that those first shovels full of earth would launch a journey of unimaginable joy. Or how greatly our work would transform not just our home, but our lives.

Scientists under arrest: the researchers taking action over climate change

Nature

Fed up with a lack of political progress in solving the climate problem, some researchers are becoming activists to slow global warming.

Climate scientist Peter Kalmus is freaked out. And he thinks everyone should be just as alarmed as he is over the state of the planet. […]

He decided he needed to do more to confront the problem. On 6 April 2022, Kalmus, two other scientists and an engineer blockaded a Los Angeles branch of JP Morgan Chase, an investment banking firm that invests heavily in fossil-fuel extraction. “I’m willing to take a risk for this gorgeous planet and my son,” he said to a small crowd and in a video posted on Facebook, earning himself some 700,000 page views. He was arrested for trespassing. The protest was part of a global effort that day by members of the international environmentalist group Scientist Rebellion, which claims the event was “the largest civil disobedience campaign by scientists in history”.

Researchers are noticing a rising tide of anger and action by climate scientists such as Kalmus, who are frustrated that ever-more dire forecasts and extreme events related to climate change aren’t provoking an effective response. They are “increasingly becoming aware that while science is necessary for moving towards policy-making, it is insufficient to get to policy-making on its own, and science cannot create political will”, said Dana Fisher, a sociologist at American University in Washington DC.

What One Researcher Learned Studying Grizzlies for 40 Years

The Revelator

Bruce McLellan recalls seeing his first grizzly bear when he was only 4 years old. It must have made an impression. He became a wildlife ecologist and devoted his career to studying the hulking bruins — much of it in the same remote place.

He moved to the wilds of the Flathead Valley in Canada in 1978 with his wife, Celine, and spent more than 40 years there, capturing, radio-collaring and then following the lives of 170 different grizzlies. He and Celine, who often accompanied him during his work, built a cabin along the Flathead River, where they raised two children.

During that time they contended with wildfires, floods, wildlife and even creepy neighbors. But living there also allowed McLellan to live amongst the animals he was studying. He followed the whole lives of several female bears who lived into their late 20s and early 30s.