Nature & Wildlife
When we misuse or overuse artificial light at night, we create nighttime light pollution, which makes it harder to see the night sky and causes negative effects on wildlife and human health. For example, sea turtle hatchlings usually wait until night to emerge from their nests to reduce exposure to daytime predators.
Nature & Wildlife
In 2024, I started the year by writing about nature: CO2 emissions, temperatures and the optimism a lot of us felt about clean energy technologies with consistent cost declines.
Nature & Wildlife
With the end of October near and Halloween decorations almost everywhere you look, you might be wondering why certain animals are so often featured as we approach the spookiest holiday. Why do plastic owls decorate lawns, and fake bats hang from every nook and cranny?
Travel Tips
Americans, it seems, have always been on the move. In fact, the U.S. is one of the most mobile countries in the world, with 71% of us having traveled internationally at some point in our lives. Perhaps it’s because we’re optimistic searchers: always looking for a better job, a different place, or a brighter tomorrow.
Nature & Wildlife
We know that spending time in nature is good for us, proven by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of scientific studies. But most of what we know about nature and its benefits have come from research focused on how seeing nature affects us.
Nature & Wildlife
Nearly 1,000 birds were killed in Chicago on October 4, 2023, when they collided with an illuminated glass building. Though mass fatalities of this magnitude are rare, light pollution poses a serious—and growing—threat to migrating birds. We need birds.
Nature & Wildlife
Next week, I’ll mark another birthday. While I’m grateful for all the ones I’ve been fortunate enough to have so far, how quickly they seem to roll by now is somewhat daunting. That makes me a bit sad. In turn, that has me wondering: at what age are we our happiest?
News & More
Quiet, small-but-deep Crawford Lake in Canada’s Niagara Escarpment in Ontario may soon become the symbolic starting point for a radical new chapter in Earth’s official history: the Anthropocene, or the Age of Humans.
Nature & Wildlife
Silence. It can be “deafening” when your ideas are met with disapproval, or when people expect you to act or speak—and you don’t. It can be “golden” when it’s wise to say nothing at all. It can also be “listened to,” if the folk-rock singers Simon and Garfunkel are correct.
Nature & Wildlife
Although invisible, noise pollution—defined as consistent exposure to elevated sound levels—is real. Also known as environmental noise or sound pollution, noise pollution often takes a back seat to other concerns, such as air, chemical and water pollution, since it cannot be seen, smelled or tasted. Sound is measured in decibels.
African Safaris
If eating better is one of your goals for the New Year, you’re probably considering adopting guidelines from the popular Mediterranean diet, becoming a vegetarian or, perhaps, following Paleo diet recommendations. But, here’s something you’ve likely never thought about: modeling your eating on a traditional, rural Tanzanian diet.
Nature & Wildlife
Is there a median strip on any of your neighborhood’s roadways with a patch of greenery on it? Chances are there is. You may have hardly noticed it or think that something so small makes very little impact, other than providing a pleasing place to glance at as you drive.
