Lake Superior is famous for the ferocity of its winter winds and storms, and a new study suggests that, if anything, there are bigger storms to come.

As the world’s largest lake warms, it is kicking up stronger winds. The extra-blustery weather on Lake Superior is causing faster currents, and possibly changing the ecology of the lake and the distribution of local air pollution.

So says a new study of Lake Superior — the world’s largest lake by surface area, containing 10 percent of the unfrozen freshwater on the planet — published this week in Nature Geoscience.

Faster currents, stronger winds, one of the world’s more treacherous bodies of water could be even more so in days to come. Be prepared for even worse consequences, something on the order of a revival of “The Wreck of the Edmund Firtzgerald“.

Here in the Upper Midwest, one of the more notorious invasive species is the flying carp, and for residents of the Great Lakes, the enemy is at the gates.

The decade-old battle to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes may be over.

New research shows the super-sized fish likely have made it past the $9 million electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

Now the only thing left standing between the fish and Lake Michigan is a heavily used navigational lock at Navy Pier.

Dave Dempsey at Planetsave quotes an official who points out that no actual carp body has yet been found beyond the barrior. Once that happens, of course, it’s pretty much too late.

Last-ditch efforts to stop the carp could include poisoning the entire canal. That’s an extreme measure, and there’s already reason to wonder if it could be done fast enough.

There are high mountain lakes in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks that are naturally free of fish and home to yellow-legged frogs. Non-native trout, introduced into the lakes, are now threatening the survival of the frogs, and the question for the National Park Service is what to do about it.

There are 560 lakes and ponds within the parks that contain introduced trout, and removal of these non-native species from up to 15 percent of these sites will be considered. Up to 82 lakes and 56 miles of streams are being considered for trout removal.

In its scoping document, the Park Service says the trout removal project “is needed to preserve and restore aquatic ecosystems and populations of native species, including mountain yellow-legged frogs in high elevation lakes and streams, creating new opportunities for visitors to experience native wildlife yet also maintaining recreational fishing opportunities.”

A preliminary project to eradicate trout from 11 lakes in the two parks since 2001 has allowed the recovery of yellow-legged frogs at these lakes. Now Park Service officials want to broaden the campaign to restore the frogs throughout the two parks - while leaving the fish in many lakes that are popular with anglers.

So the controversy is which lakes to remove the trout from, and how to go about doing it. For more information, and the opportunity to comment if you are so inclined, go to Save The Frogs!

The oceans are so big that it’s hard to imagine them being ruined. But anyone following the subject has run into dead zones and dying coral and over-fishing and garbage in the Pacific to where it seems the oceans are afflicted with a multitude of problems.

Threats from so many directions can make it hard to see the big picture, but this article from the Boston Phoenix does a good job of doing just that. It’s mostly bad news tempered with the possibility that we can still do something to help out. Recommended for anyone with an interest in the planets’s, and our, future.

The Interior Department’s office of Surface Mining finally has a new leader, Joe Pizarchik, and they have begun the process of establishing policies that will govern activities like mountaintop removal coal mining.

Pizarchik is generally thought of as being industry-friendly, so the more input that comes in against mountaintop removal, the better. Here’s part of what’s at stake:

Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, OSM, is publishing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the protection of streams from the impacts of surface coal mining operations.

The notice requests comments on alternatives for revising the current regulations, including the controversial stream buffer zone rule issued in December 2008 in the final weeks of the Bush administration.

The 2008 stream buffer rule modified a 1983 rule that prohibited the dumping of waste rock within 100 feet of a perennial or intermittent stream except when such activities “will not cause or contribute to the violation of State or Federal water quality standards and will not adversely affect the water quantity or quality or other environmental resources of the stream.”

The 2008 rule allows a surface coal mine operator to place waste rock into streams if the operator can show “it is not reasonably possible” to avoid doing so.

The 2008 stream buffer rule was a last minute Bush administration gift to the coal companies. It will take public pressure to change it, so here’s where to go.

The public is invited to review and comment on the proposed rulemaking and on OSM’s proposed Oversight Improvement Actions. The advance notice of proposed rulemaking will be sent to the Federal Register shortly. Beginning on the date of publication, comments may be submitted using the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. The document has been assigned Docket ID: OSM-2009-0009.

The public is also invited to review and comment by December 18, 2009, on OSM’s proposed Oversight Improvement Actions, online at http://www.osmre.gov/topic/Oversight/SCM/SCM.shtm. The preferred method for submitting comments is via e-mail to Oversight@osmre.gov. Comments may also be mailed to: Administrative Record (MS 252 SIB), Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 1951 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20240.

The siamese crocodile was thought to have disappeared and was declared extinct in the 1990’s. But wait a minute.

DNA tests have found 35 pure-bred Siamese crocodiles at a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia.

There are fewer then 250 of the species left in the wild, but the crocodiles at the sanctuary could now form the basis of a captive-breeding programme.

The discovery continues a remarkable comeback for the species.

Siamese crocodiles were declared extinct in the 1990s - before a small population was discovered in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains.

This is the conservationist equivalent of finding gold in your backyard or a Rembrandt in the attic. The siamese crocodile is still in such low numbers that it remains endangered, but a new population to breed from is a big hope.

Some good news about a species that’s been declining.

With its gleaming red, blue and green feathers, the painted bunting is often described as the most beautiful migratory songbird in North America.

After a 30 year decline and extirpation from parts of its U.S. range, the species appears to be recovering. Now scientists at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington are reaching out to citizen scientists to help them confirm this observation and help advance the bird’s survival.

The eastern population of painted buntings breeds in summer along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Florida and migrates south for the winter into southern Florida and the Caribbean. It is this population that is the focus of Painted Bunting Observer Team research.

Helping out can be as simple a matter as keeping track of buntings that visit your bird feeder.

In Florida, the team wants to recruit and maintain an active group of volunteers who can make observations and collect data at backyard bird feeders and can help band and monitor banded buntings, especially during the winter.

So if you’re a backyard bird feeder living from North Carolina to Florida and want to help out with learning more about the painted bunting, click here.

We talk so much about species going extinct that it’s easy to forget that there are still times when new species emerge.

The latest is a new finch in the Galapagos islands, which is a little bigger and sings a different song than its neighbors. There aren’t lot of them yet, but they are clearly forming a new distinct species.

That doesn’t mean they’ll be around long, however.

It’s possible that they’ll be out-competed by other finches on the island. Their initial gene pool may contain flaws that will be magnified with time. A chance disaster could wipe them out. The birds might even return to the fold of their parent species, and merge with them through interbreeding.

But for now, we can welcome a new kind of finch to the world. Long may they fly.

Minnesota’s governor-turned-presidential-candidate is taking some flack in the local hunting community for his hunting ethics.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has taken a drubbing from hunters for not tracking down a deer he shot on opening day of Minnesota’s firearm deer season.

A headline on deerhuntingchat.com calls the possible presidential candidate a “slob hunter” for wounding a deer on Nov. 7 and then leaving for a Republican fundraiser in Iowa before the animal could be found.

After the governor shot the deer at 7 a.m. from more than 200 yards away, he and his brother Dan, an accomplished hunter, went to where they last saw the animal.

Finding blood but no deer, they returned to base camp for breakfast and to consider their next move.

We all know these politician out hunting things are staged events, part of a campaign itinerary, and Pawlenty can’t be blamed too much for having another appointment to make, especially if there were other hunters in the party able to search for the deer.

But that part about finding the blood at 7 A.M. and then retiring for breakfast to consider the next move is a bit problematic. When you’ve taken your shot and found blood, the next move is to find the deer, no consideration needed.

Invasive species that spread through water are always difficult to deal with, zebra mussels, flying carp, and millfoil are all well-known examples here in the Midwest. Imagine, though, an invasive species spreading through the ocean, taking advantage of changing conditions to ruin life for everything else.

No need to imagine it. They’re already here.

They’re known as “cockroaches of the sea,” and swarms of supersized jellyfish are growing even larger and more menacing as Earth heats up, the AP reports. The hardy scavengers benefit from almost anything that hurts other ocean dwellers — sort of bizarro-world canaries in the coal mine — and some scientists are worried climate change could be their key to world domination. Overfishing has already obliterated many of their top predators, and pollution has helped proliferate the plankton they eat, but marine biologists have also begun noticing strong correlations between warmer ocean temperatures and exploding jellyfish populations.