Travel Tips
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the most stressful time of the year. No matter where you tend to fall on that spectrum during the week preceding the end-of-the-year holidays, almost all of us hope for a quiet and peaceful season. But how do you go about achieving that silence?
Latin America
In recent years, reports on monarch butterfly populations have been confusing: just two years ago, we were hearing that the monarchs were teetering on the edge of extinction. More recently, however, conservation news headlines have alerted us to increases in monarch butterfly populations—as much as 144 percent in one year.
Nature & Wildlife
On a recent Natural Habitat Adventures fall trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, my guide talked about a common question he gets from visitors who come to see the National Elk Refuge at this time of year. “Where are all the elk?” they typically ask.
Nature & Wildlife
Searching for “fall color” is a favorite pastime here in the Midwest where I live. And that’s right up my alley, as I love trees. That’s why in autumn, I particularly think of forests.
Nature & Wildlife
When you weigh anywhere from 1,000 to 14,000 pounds, you tend to leave huge, deep footprints wherever you walk. But more than just evidence of your passing through, those footprints, it turns out, can be habitats for dozens of other beings. Much like beavers, elephants have widely been recognized as “ecosystem engineers.”
Nature Photography
While there are higher mountains in North America, perhaps none are more dramatic than those in the Teton Range. Grand Teton Mountain rises almost 7,000 feet straight up from the Jackson Hole Valley, with no foothills to impede the views of its rocky slopes and spectacular, often snowcapped peak.
Nature & Wildlife
National parks are some of our favorite wild places, set aside for all of us to enjoy and for wildlife to find some yet remaining, far-too-scarce natural habitats. Here, in these lands, we can recharge, find solace and connect and reconnect with our families.
Nature & Wildlife
We still have three weeks until the end of a long and brutally hot summer. At times, it seems the only respite we can get outside during our picnics, state fair visits, outdoor music festivals and cabin-by-the-lake stays is to find some shade, most often under a tree.
Conservation
More than eight million tons of plastic debris end up in our oceans every year. Present in nearly every oceanic layer, plastic garbage today accounts for nearly 80 percent of all waste found in our oceans.
African Safaris
Recent research has revealed that wildlife tourism is five times more lucrative than poaching. In 2018, it was found that while the illegal wildlife trade accounted for 23 billion dollars of global GDP, ecotourism brought in 120.1 billion dollars.
Antarctica & Arctic
If narwhal-beluga crosses (narlugas) are a result of climate change, will it help the two species continue to survive, or will it inadvertently doom them?
Alaska
Every summer, from about mid-June to mid-October, the grizzly bears at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska are featured in a live-cam show that you can watch via Explore.org. And once or twice a week during that time period, Mike Fitz, resident naturalist with Explore.org, hosts a live “chat” with the audience.
