The invasive snakes of Puerto Rico
These images and others were published in this Vox story.
A ball python collected by Timothy Colston, an evolutionary biologist and snake researcher at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.
Biologist Alberto Puente-Rolón holds a reticulated python that was captured recently in the central mountains of Puerto Rico.
An invasive boa constrictor in Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge.
A recently euthanized boa constrictor that’s about to be dissected.
NYC's wildlife rehabbers
These images and others were published in this Vox story.
Rehabber Amanda Lullo holds a friendly wild rat she’s caring for.
Lullo, who works out of her home in Staten Island, prepares to feed a handful of orphaned baby squirrels.
Arina Hinzen prepares a baby opossum for feeding.
A four-week-old baby opossum.
Amina Martin rehabilitates pigeons and other birds in a small apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
At least twice a week, Martin lets each pigeon out of its cage to fly around her apartment.
Hawai'i wildlife
These images and others were published in this Vox story.
Red-footed boobies in Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.
Green sea turtles, a federally threatened species, on a beach in Kauai, where they come ashore — often by the dozens — to rest.
A seabird called an a‘o, or Newell’s shearwater, dives in a small swimming pool at Save Our Shearwaters, a seabird rehab center in Kauai.
A collection of Hawaii elepaio, a native flycatcher, at the Bishop Museum.
A handful of federally endangered Hawaiian snails called Achatinella fulgens.
Another federally endangered snail, Achatinella fuscobasis. Scientists believe that it’s extinct in the wild.
Florida's nonnative species
A pair of blue and gold macaws in Miami.
A blue and gold macaw.
A Cuban tree frog perches on a palm tree branch. They’re native to Cuba and a handful of other Caribbean islands.
A baseball-size cane toad in the grass by a well-lit parking lot in Naples, Florida.
A veiled chameleon in a patch of trees near a canal east of Fort Myers, Florida
Vervet monkeys at a parking lot near the Fort Lauderdale airport.
Burrowing owls
A burrowing owl by a farm in the Imperial Valley, California.
A burrowing owl flies over a field in the Imperial Valley, California.
A burrowing owl by a farm in the Imperial Valley, California.
A burrowing own in a field of alfalfa in the Imperial Valley, California.
Colorado River
The Salton Sea is receding as farmers in California’s Imperial Valley use less water on their fields, exposing vast stretches of lake bed.
John Boelts, a produce farmer in Yuma, Arizona, kneels in a field of melon plants.
The All American Canal cuts through dunes between Yuma and the Imperial Valley.
A field is flooded with water in Brawley, California, in the Imperial Valley.
Jack Vessey, a farmer and farm advocate in the Imperial Valley, examines a head of lettuce.
Rows and rows of romaine lettuce cover the ground in Yuma.