Videos
In our imaginations, nothing symbolizes our seas more than whales. These bigger-than-life creatures imbue our oceans with life, with song and with majesty, mystery and myth. If anything else represents our oceans more, I can’t think of it. That thought is a bit ironic because there was a time when whales walked the Earth.
Nature & Wildlife
Whenever I hear that a little piece of the wild has slipped away forever, it saddens me. And another small bit of it vanished recently. Or you could say, perhaps more accurately, that we now know that a fragment of it has disappeared for good.
Nature & Wildlife
In 2015, on the steppes of Kazakhstan, at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, more than 200,000 critically endangered saiga antelope suddenly died in a span of just three weeks.
Asia & The Pacific
It’s ironic that an animal whose name includes the word sun would be a creature of the night. But once darkness descends, the Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanus)—the smallest member of the bear family—lumbers through the dense, lowland forests of Southeast Asia, snacking on berries, birds, fruits, insects, lizards, rodents and roots.
U.S. National Parks
It seems that the snow monkeys of Japan aren’t the only animals that seek out baths. In 2016, National Geographic set up some camera traps at the “bear bathtub,” a natural swimming hole in Yellowstone National Park that happens to be a popular place for wildlife.
Nature & Wildlife
Eastern cougars (Puma concolor couguar) were officially declared extinct last week, on January 22, 2018. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has now removed them from the Endangered Species list, where they had been placed in 1973.
Videos
European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are now common birds in the United States; and sometimes, as they say, familiarity breeds contempt. Loud, boisterous and ballsy, the birds are known to eat through crops, monopolize feeders and cause airline disasters.
Conservation
I read about something today that may seem like a small thing to know in the midst of all the news in our lives. But perhaps, deep down inside it, you’ll find a very profound thought and idea. This small item came from a study conducted at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Nature & Wildlife
It’s the day after New Year’s, and we’re just entering into 2018. In Times Square last night, according to the Associated Press, it was the second-coldest New Year’s celebration on record. The temperature was only 10 degrees Fahrenheit in New York City at midnight.
Videos
The Christmas holiday is over—just barely. Feeling a little exhausted after all the preparations, family gatherings and parties? Then, a nice soak in a hot spring should be just the ticket for you. Of course, I can’t physically take you all to a spot with some natural, thermal waters.
Nature & Wildlife
Wildlife science has many measurements; for example, “carrying capacity,” “depredations” or “translocations.” But there’s a new scale I recently came across: “bird years lost.” A bird year is a quantity devised by ornithologist Daniel Cristol at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Nature & Wildlife
Despite what you may have learned in elementary school, there were probably no turkeys at the first Thanksgiving. The written menu listed fowl, but this most likely meant ducks, goose, grouse, passenger pigeons, swans—or maybe even bald eagles.
