Environment

Who doesn’t love Monarch Butterflies?  Could you imagine the loss we would feel if they disappeared?  Our guest on Central Standard today will talk to us about the decline of monarch butterfly populations.  It comes down to a loss of habitat.   We discuss the severity of the situation and what we can do to help turn things around?  We also discuss threats to bees and the implications of having another pollinator at risk.  Our guest works for K-U.  Orley “Chip” Taylor is a trained insect ecologist and founded Monarch Watch some 20-years ago.   It’s an opportunity to learn about monarch butterflies….

After a series of problems, the operators of the only nuclear power plant in Kansas say they're making progress toward satisfying the concerns of federal regulators.

After a drawn out winter where we in Kansas City found ourselves hibernating through the snow and ice of March, spring has finally sprung. The trees are blooming and the landscape is finally peppered with color as plants and wildlife emerge from dormancy. On this Central Standard, we explore the nature around us as we transition into Spring. 

April 1st marks the start of spring turkey season in Kansas for archers, youth and disabled hunters.

In the early 1960s, wild turkeys were reintroduced to the state, and almost every county now has a huntable population.

Mike Miller with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks, and Tourism, says turkeys are anything but easy prey.

“When everything works out right it can be a really easy exciting hunt, for any hunter, especially a young hunter, just because of what you see and what you hear, and the whole build up as you get into shotgun range,” says Miller.

Most of the freshwater on earth isn’t held in rivers, lakes or streams.  It’s in massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.  Those ice sheets hold a valuable record about the past climate of earth, but now they are melting at an increasing rate.  Professor Prasad Gogineni of Kansas University and director of the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) joins us to discuss how scientists are studying this phenomenon.