African Safaris
Imagine that you are lactose intolerant, and then you discover that all of the grocery stores in your vicinity sell only dairy products. That’s how a Duke University, North Carolina, ecologist describes the predicament of sifakas, a genus of lemur.
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.
Videos
Bears, lynx, wolves and wildcats used to roam the lands that today make up Great Britain. European brown bears, however, have been extinct there since at least the early Middle Ages—and possibly even earlier. British lynx disappeared around 700 A.D., due to hunting and habitat destruction. And by the turn of the 16th century, wolves were extinct in England and Wales.
African Safaris
More than 350 types of frogs live in Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo. The nation stretches across 226,917 square miles (approximately the size of France or Texas) off the coast of East Africa. This gives Madagascar possibly the highest frog diversity per square mile of any country in the world.
Conservation
Around the world, nearly 3 billion people cook their meals using open fires or simple stoves fueled by biomass (animal dung, crop waste or wood), coal or kerosene, according to the World Health Organization.
Conservation
Norway is the first country in the world to commit to no longer using any products that contribute to deforestation.
Nature & Wildlife
Searching for “fall color” is a favorite pastime here in the Midwest where I live. And that’s right up my alley, as I love trees. That’s why in autumn, I particularly think of forests.
Nature & Wildlife
National parks are some of our favorite wild places, set aside for all of us to enjoy and for wildlife to find some yet remaining, far-too-scarce natural habitats. Here, in these lands, we can recharge, find solace and connect and reconnect with our families.
Nature & Wildlife
We still have three weeks until the end of a long and brutally hot summer. At times, it seems the only respite we can get outside during our picnics, state fair visits, outdoor music festivals and cabin-by-the-lake stays is to find some shade, most often under a tree.
Europe
The Scottish Highlands have been described as achingly beautiful, and I’d have to agree. In this vast wilderness, glens sit in ancient glacial valleys, striped by ribbons of rivers and enclosed by jagged mountain peaks. But this lovely landscape could not be defined as “untouched.”
Conservation
Brilliant and skillful in its storytelling, the emotions Our Planet evokes are all at once awe-inspiring, mesmerizing and heart-wrenching. This gripping portrait of the critical condition of our planet highlights key conservation issues, which can be boiled down to one problem: our world is becoming less wild.
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.
