This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Story by Katie Jewett | Photographs by Luka Dakskobler
Gregor Aljančič enters a concrete tunnel and descends into a subterranean world below the city of Kranj, in northern Slovenia. Lamps illuminate his one-minute walk down the claustrophobic passageway, which fades to pitch black as he reaches the main chamber of Tular Cave Laboratory. The 50 year-old has visited the laboratory since boyhood, when he came with his father, the lab’s founder, and he knows its occupants well. The reinforced natural cave, once a World War II air raid shelter for a factory, now serves as a safe haven for blind salamanders known as olms (
India Currents, in collaboration with bioGraphic and the California Academy of Sciences, is publishing the last in a 3 part series on Chennai’s restoration of its marshlands. R
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Featured Image: Mylapore Tank holds water even during the dry season, but only because its bottom has been paved over.)
Temple tanks
As in most Indian cities, Chennai’s piped water supply is available for just a few hours a day. And many parts of the city have no water connection at all. So many people pump groundwater, either on their own property or from government wells on the street. Others hire tanker trucks to fill their cisterns with water that has also been extracted from underground. “A huge quantity, almost 200 MLD [million liters daily] of water, is being shipped every day,” a water utility official told me. But surface and groundwater are not separate sources; they are linked by gravity and hydraulic pressure. So when people pump groundwater, they are ultimately depleting surface wate
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The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
Cinnabar Theater s production of James Lecense s gay-themed solo play, performed by Michael Pavone. Thru Jan. 31. https://cinnabartheater.org/
Ann
Los Altos Stage Company s production of Holland Taylor s one-woman play about the amazing outspoken late Texas Governor Ann Richards, performed by Judith Miller. Jan. 22-24, 29-31. $20 per device. http://losaltosstage.org
Bechtel Fest 8
Chicago s Broken Nose Theatre company presents a series of online plays; the annual festival of new short plays features an ensemble of femme, female-identifying, non-binary, trans and queer actors talking about things other than men; free, thru March 26. https://brokennosetheatre.com/
California Grizzly Bears Are Extinct But Some Want To Reintroduce Their ‘Cousins’ To Sierra A stuffed grizzly bear from Canada a DNA cousin of the extinct California Grizzly Bear is on display at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum.
Imagine a creature pushing 1,000 pounds, almost 10 feet high on their hind legs, and about as finicky eaters as a house rat or a domestic pig rambling across the Altamont Pass.
This is not a sci-fi animal but one that roamed the Northern San Joaquin Valley, the Diablo Range, and much of California for centuries up until 170 years ago or so.
They were the California Grizzly Bears.