Arctic ground squirrels unlock permafrost carbon
Found on BBC News on Wednesday, 17 December 2014
Scientists have found that the animals are hastening the release of greenhouse gases from the permafrost - a vast, frozen store of carbon.
Dr Natali said: "If ground squirrels are adding nitrogen to an area - and that area doesn't have plants because they dug them up - this may result in increased loss of carbon from the system."
That's quite a relief. For a moment people thought that humans were the root cause for too much greenhouse gases in the air. Now let's blame squirrels instead.