Canada & the North
Video: Greenland’s Ice, Elemental and Ephemeral
A polar vortex over the Midwestern states has kept me cold and inside for most of this month. I’ve had to stop my daily walks with my dog, because her paws get too cold.
Good Nature Travel Blog
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Travel Tips
The Most Beautiful Countries in the World Have Two Problems
Almost a year ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic raced around the world, I thought of writing to you about the countries that seem to perpetually be on annual lists of the “most beautiful in the world”—nations such as Costa Rica, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Kenya.
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Conservation
Paying for Protecting Wildernesses and Biodiversity
True wilderness areas—where human impacts are minimal or entirely absent—are dwindling. That probably comes as no surprise to you.
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Nature & Wildlife
Above the Tree Line in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
I once walked on the moon. It was remote and windy and bare; the kind of landscape that seems to call to me. This “moon,” though, wasn’t off Earth. It was found just outside Yellowstone National Park in the Shoshone National Forest, above the tree line.
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Travel Tips
See the Natural Wonders of the World in 2021
It’s time to say farewell to 2020; and for many of us, we’re happy to do it—perhaps more so than for any other year we’ve ever experienced. For those smitten with wanderlust, 2020 was definitely the “year of lost travels” and missed opportunities for connecting with other people and cultures around the globe.
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Nature & Wildlife
Three Laws I’d Enact If I Ruled the World
With the presidential election coming up next week, I can’t help but think about the future of our world—mostly the next four years—and what it will look like. There are so many things that I would change, as I’m sure you would, too. So, what would my priorities be if I ruled the world?
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Conservation
The Worth of a Whale and the Price Tag of a Panda
In prepandemic times, those of us who cherish wildlife and wild places tried to quantify them in economic terms, hoping to convince those who didn’t care about protecting nature that not doing so would impact their bottom lines. Now, 10 months after the coronavirus outbreak, that strategy seems naive to me.
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Latin America
Patagonia Ice and the Pandemic Stories It Will Tell
With temperatures predicted to top 90 degrees Fahrenheit all week in Wisconsin where I live, I, of course, have been thinking about ice. For the past two decades, in fact, my thoughts have often turned to the world’s glacial fields and how climate change is changing them.
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News & More
Studying the Structure of Giant Sequoias to Keep Us Safer
Yosemite National Park’s massive mountains—such as El Capitan, one of the world’s tallest monoliths—and its many waterfalls—such as Yosemite Falls, which drops 2,425 feet and is the highest falls in North America—provide some of the most picturesque and unique views of natural wonders anywhere on the planet.
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News & More
New Discovery Shows Mayans Valued Essential Workers, Too
One of the many things that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is how important essential workers are to our own well-being and to society as a whole.
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Conservation
Hope for Coral Reefs in Crisis
For almost 24 million years, say scientists, coral reefs have functioned relatively unchanged. That is, until the 1980s. Starting in that decade, tropical coral reef coverage around the world has declined by about 30 to 50 percent.
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African Safaris
Madagascar’s Dwindling Forests and Their Linked Lemurs
Imagine that you are lactose intolerant, and then you discover that all of the grocery stores in your vicinity sell only dairy products. That’s how a Duke University, North Carolina, ecologist describes the predicament of sifakas, a genus of lemur.