Gerrit Vyn, a biologist with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has just returned from Teshekpuk Lake in Alaska with hours of bird recordings. He tells host Bruce Gellerman about some of the birds he saw, and what stands to be lost if the area is open to oil drilling.

Amy Fish reports that space dust may hold the key to life in outer space.

In an attempt to stop the westward spread of crop-consuming wild rabbits, Australia put a fence across an almost 2,000 mile stretch of the outback. The fence didn’t stop the rabbits, but it’s caused an interesting phenomenon: the weather is different on each side of the fence. Host Bruce Gellerman speaks with Udaysankar S. Nair of the University of Alabama, who conducted research on how land use affects the weather.

From the UN to the White House, world leaders wrestled with the thorniest policy problems on climate change this past week. The message to America: the world is tired of waiting for the U.S. to act. Living on Earth's Jeff Young talks with host Bruce Gellerman.

Fifty years ago, Soviet scientists launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in history. The tiny sphere orbited the globe for just a few months but changed the world forever. Host Bruce Gellerman talks with Roald Sagdeev, director emeritus of the Soviet Institute for Space Research in Moscow.

The harvest season is winding down and people's pantries are filling up with the last of the summer's tomatoes, winter squash, carrots and cobs of corn. In this final segment of our series on cooking with CSAs, producer Ian Gray visits his local farm in Granby, Massachusetts with food writer Kathy Gunst for some tips on how to make the produce last through the winter months.

Living on Earth dips into the mailbag to hear what listeners have to say.

The Bureau of Land Management hopes to lease the last untouched part of Alaska’s North Slope to oil and gas drilling companies. Host Bruce Gellerman speaks with Stan Senner, executive director of Audubon Alaska, about Teshekpuk Lake, which is a critical nesting and mating ground for migratory birds and other species, and could soon be developed.

Living on Earth continues its series with readings from the book “Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape,” edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney. In this installment, Eva Saulitis, a writer, teacher and marine biologist from Homer, Alaska, explores the term “boreal forest”.