USFWS/NCTC Thoughts From Home: Your Conservation Podcast from the National Conservation Training Center - Celebrating 60 Years of Silent Spring!

Celebrating 60 Years of Silent Spring!

04/12/22 • 28 min

USFWS/NCTC Thoughts From Home: Your Conservation Podcast from the National Conservation Training Center

The USFWS Library is celebrating 60 years of Silent Spring! This April, we're reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the classic that launched the environmental movement for America's Wild Read. Conservation hero Rachel Carson (1907–1964) was a renowned author and one of the first female biologists to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She became one of the most celebrated and beloved science writers in America, but it is easy to forget how controversial Silent Spring was when it was released despite now being a classic of conservation literature.

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Creepy Crawly and Misunderstood Wildlife - Part 1

Some creepy crawly and misunderstood wildlife, like spiders, bats, and raccoons offer a lot of benefits to our environment and we'd like to shed some positive light on those important ecoservices. In Part 1 of the Creepy Crawly and Misunderstood Wildlife podcast, the team talks about spiders, bats, and raccoons. Spiders are hardy builders, using their cable-like silk to create intricate webs to catch up to 14 times their own weight in insect prey. Bats are a unique species, flying mammals that navigate their environment via echolocation and most North American bats are entirely insectivorous, with some individual bats consuming up to 4,500 flying insects per night. Raccoons are important predators of wasps nests, but they also eat wild fruits, crayfish, and mice.

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