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.
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.
Conservation
Spreading around the world at the speed of light, COVID-19 has now infected more than 2.5 million people and killed almost 177,000. Although the virus’s origins are still a little murky, it’s highly likely that it jumped from species to species, until it hit ours. Trading diseases with wildlife isn’t new.
African Safaris
The term Africa’s Big Five means something quite different today than it did when it was coined in the late 1800s during the continent’s colonial period. Then, it referenced the animals—Cape buffalo (or African buffalo), elephants, leopards, lions and rhinoceroses—that trophy hunters considered to be the most challenging and dangerous to hunt on foot.
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.
Videos
Next Monday, April 22, 2019, the world will mark its 49th Earth Day. The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, was inspired by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, who modeled it on the antiwar protests of the late 1960s. The original Earth Day began on university campuses as a national “teach-in” on environmental issues.
Nature & Wildlife
More than 1,500 “national” days have been declared, according to the National Day Calendar. For example, January 2 is National Cream Puff Day. March 4 is Marching Music Day. The first Saturday in May is National Start Seeing Monarchs Day. And don’t forget World Emoji Day on July 17.
Conservation
The dangers of sharing wildlife photos on social media have been known since at least 2014: the geotags in your shared snapshots can lead poachers to their prey. Even in our national parks, sharing photos of wildlife sightings in real time can create mobs of people that stress wildlife.
News & More
Sometimes, it’s the small, quiet things that rightly should command our utmost attention. Such a situation occurred on March 1, 2018, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) wrote a memorandum stating that it was reversing a 2014 ban imposed by the Obama administration on elephant trophy imports.
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.
Conservation
There’s a sinister bill making its way through Congress, but you probably don’t know about it. The reason you don’t know about it is because of its name. It’s called the “SAVES Act” (Saving America’s Endangered Species Act, H.R. 2603). Sounds like it could be a good law, right? You couldn’t be more wrong.
Nature & Wildlife
As the field of electronic wildlife-tracking has grown, so has our knowledge about the lives of animals.
