Sheila Madrak, a San Diego-based wildlife biologist who specializes in sea turtles, has a simple answer.
“All of them are turtles,” she says.
The end.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/shell-game--how-to-tell-a-turtle-from-a-tortoise/
For Swei, California’s lower prevalence of Lyme is an opportunity to probe how the bacteria that causes the disease spreads differently on the West Coast. One leading explanation has to do with the different hosts that Lyme-carrying ticks prefer. In the Northeast, young ticks like to feed on the blood of small mammals like mice and chipmunks. In California, however, they have another favorite: western fence lizards. These lizards have unique blood that actually kills off the Lyme bacteria present in ticks, essentially un-infecting them.
http://news.sfsu.edu/news-story/biologists-sf-state-dig-ticks-and-lyme-disease
Public Meeting to be held December 6, 2017, 6-8 p.m. at the Orcutt Academy Charter (formerly Winifred Wollam Elementary School).
Toxic risks also face several threatened and endangered species on the site — the California red-legged frog, the California tiger salamander and the Western spadefoot toad — from high levels of chromium, copper and zinc in the soils and high concentrations of salts, as well as metals, in surface ponds.
This is great California newt habitat so watch your step to avoid injuring one. Two species of newts in Marin have orange bellies, and both have toxins to protect themselves so they amble along without much fear of predators. The neurotoxin tetradotoxin is the same toxin found in puffer fish. While the rough-skinned newt is more toxic, California newts still have enough of the toxin to kill a person foolish enough to eat one.
http://www.marinij.com/lifestyle/20171126/hike-redwoods-in-novato-see-for-yourself
For decades, an oak-studded slice of Mount Diablo, where deer and coyotes roam, was under threat of development. But in the end, it may have been an endangered frog that came to the rescue.
December 15, 2017 - WASHINGTON— Three conservation groups today intervened on the side of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a lawsuit challenging the designation of protected critical habitat for the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, the northern population of the mountain yellow-legged frog and the Yosemite toad in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
Conservation groups on Friday lobbied a federal judge for permission to join a fight between the federal government and a ranching association over a trio of California amphibian species.
https://www.courthousenews.com/conservationists-lobby-to-join-fray-over-frog-habitat/
Yosemite’s Resources Management and Science Division asks park vistors, driving vehicles this fall and winter season, to be conscientious of migrating species.
This time of year brings the migration of the California red-legged frog and the Western pond turtle as they head from pond, river, and slack water to higher ground.
One man’s obsession with the adorable amphibians caught on in a year of scandals and disasters of all sorts threatening to overwhelm us.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvw8eq/salamander-twitter
California State Parks invites the public to start 2018 in a healthy way by connecting to nature, and what better way to do so than participating in the fifth annual First Day Hikes.
This year, close to 50 state parks are scheduled to host more than 80 hikes and outings on New Year's Day, Monday, January 1, 2018.
