Nature & Wildlife
Following New Year’s Day, it’s traditional to look back at the year just passed and reflect on our personal and communal accomplishments and setbacks. Putting our collective disappointments aside for the moment, I think there are several areas where we made major strides in 2022: • Robots are now helping us connect with nature.
Videos
Nature and the end-of-the-year holidays. If you ask me, they go together, traveling across Earth hand in hand at this special time. Maybe that’s because of all the evergreens, holly, mistletoe and poinsettias that we see everywhere we go. Or it could be that this is traditionally the time for awe, contentment, joy and peace.
African Safaris
We’re thrilled to announce that our film Exploring the Okavango | A Botswana Traveler Story has been selected as a finalist for the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s 2022 Adventure in Motion Short Film Contest!
Latin America
At more than 81,000 square miles—greater than 10 times the size of Florida’s Everglades—the Pantanal, located mostly in Brazil, is the largest tropical wetland and one of the most pristine in the world. This seasonally flooded plain is fed by tributaries of the Paraguay River and is one of the planet’s most productive habitats.
Nature & Wildlife
For me, spring and Rachel Carson are inextricably linked. In her visionary, 1962 book, Silent Spring, Carson—a marine biologist and environmental trailblazer—wrote: “Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty…
Europe
My maternal grandmother was born in Norway. She came to the United States when she was a small child and didn’t speak English. But she was smart and an avid learner—and possessed the pliable brains of the young—so, she soon adopted the dominant culture and language of her new home.
Conservation
During the drought conditions in the summer of 2021, wildfires raged throughout the western U.S. For example, as of September 12, 2021, the Dixie Fire is the second-largest wildfire in California history. It might seem ironic, then, to choose this time to talk about wildfires in a positive light.
Canada & the North
Small but strong, with a thick tail and a gorgeous, flowing mane, an Icelandic horse always inspires dreams of gracefully galloping over an ice- and snow-encrusted landscape on the back of a beautiful and spirited steed. One of my most cherished dreams has always been to ride an Icelandic horse—in Iceland.
Nature & Wildlife
This is National Wildlife Week, an annual celebration of the beauty and diversity of America’s wildlife. Started in 1938, this event encourages people across the country to learn about what they can do to protect at-risk species—including various amphibians, birds, insects and mammals—and to participate in conservation efforts.
Travel Tips
By Kelley Ashford & Irene Magafan, WWF WWF video specialists, Kelley Ashford and Irene Magafan, have both had the fortune to travel with Natural Habitat Adventures–Kelley to Borneo and Irene to Alaska, and recently shared their travel videography expertise on a Travel Videography 101 Nat Hab Daily Dose Webinar. If you missed this special webinar, catch their top tips below.
Europe
Shelter-in-place orders. Mask-wearing edicts. Quarantine guidelines. Social-distancing rules. Flatten-the-curve requirements. Temperature-taking regulations. Public-health travel restrictions. In-person, back-to-school mandates. The coronavirus pandemic, with all the unwanted stressors it’s brought into your life, can sometimes make you feel like you want to scream, right? I feel your pain. So, apparently, does Iceland.
Conservation
Stories of animals venturing into and enjoying new places have been one bright spot during the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic of 2020.
