Nature & Wildlife
You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “size matters,” used today quasi-humorously in almost every imaginable context in which the size of a particular object—animate or inanimate—is discussed. For example, one ESPN Classic article by writer Mike Puma on the racehorse Seabiscuit was titled Size Doesn’t Matter.
Conservation
American writer, conservationist, ecologist, environmentalist, forester, naturalist, philosopher and scientist Aldo Leopold once said that “harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators … the land is one organism.”
African Safaris
Cheetahs are the fastest runners on the planet. They can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just three seconds.
Nature & Wildlife
Sometimes, the divide between us and wildlife seems wide and deep. Animals live far “out there,” we typically think, while we reside in cities, suburbs, towns and semirural areas. But more and more, we find ourselves in the lands and vicinities of wild animals.
News & More
As I write this, I have now been officially stuck in my house for 10 days. Here, in Oregon, we’ve been under an Arctic blast for more than a week, and the icy hills and roads where I live have kept us “highlanders” unable to leave our premises.
Nature & Wildlife
Living in a time of almost daily extinction news, we can’t help but feel a little skip in our hearts when we hear of animal species or acres of forests that have newly been found. Anything to tip the scales back to the heavy side of biodiversity is more than fine in my book.
Nature & Wildlife
“This is the most magnificent mammal on our continent. Its story is so complicated and so interesting and moves into every aspect of almost every era of our lives and touches on so many subjects you wouldn’t think it would necessarily touch on,” says filmmaker Ken Burns of our national mammal, Bison bison.
Conservation
On December 28, 1973, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was signed into law. We’ll soon be celebrating the 50th anniversary of this landmark conservation legislation, which has saved hundreds of animals that once wavered on the brink of extinction.
Nature & Wildlife
Today, in what seems to be our never-ending search for happiness, we often describe our longings as the quest for “quality of life.” That idea and the coinage of that phrase, though, actually date back to the 1960s and 1970s, when they were often used in debates about social crises and social progress.
Conservation
Deep beneath the waters of the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR) and atop a submerged volcano, an ancient coral reef was just discovered by an international group of scientists. It’s the first to be documented inside the protected area since it was established in 1998.
Nature & Wildlife
Highly social and very vocal, African penguins are native to the waters of South Africa. But these endangered birds are now struggling to survive the human impacts and the unfolding climate crisis of the Anthropocene. However, their climate story goes back much further than our modern epoch.
African Safaris
Often, the numbers seem to look bad for African rhinos. Right now, the statistics show that these animals are rapidly declining in core, state-run reserves, such as South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Currently—much like with tigers—more than half of the continent’s remaining rhinoceroses are now on private lands.
