Travel Tips
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.
Conservation
True wilderness areas—where human impacts are minimal or entirely absent—are dwindling. That probably comes as no surprise to you.
U.S. National Parks
Let’s just go to Grand Teton National Park. I mean it. After so many weeks of economic hardships, pandemic worries and political chaos, I need to shut down for a while and get away. I bet you do, too.
Nature & Wildlife
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.
Nature & Wildlife
Anyone who has ever adopted a cat or dog into the family knows that each pet is distinctive. One of your dogs, for example, may have loved to spend all day at your side, while another may have enjoyed some daytime hours to chill out by herself on her favorite couch.
Travel Tips
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.
Nature & Wildlife
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?
Conservation
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.
U.S. National Parks
For me, Zion National Park is the place where color lives. That’s how I connect to it.
African Safaris
You probably already know the perilous position that the world’s elephants are currently negotiating. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has officially listed the Asian elephant as endangered and the African elephant as vulnerable.
News & More
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.
Conservation
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.
